WALTHAM, MASS. (WHDH) - Students at Brandeis University gathered together for a vigil in a chapel Monday evening, after tragedy struck the close-knit campus.
The horrific bus crash killed 25-year-old Undergraduate student Vanessa Mark Saturday night, and sent several others to the hospital. At least one of those students is battling potentially life-threatening injuries, according to the latest update from the Middlesex DA’s office.
“I don’t think it’s really set in for a lot of people,” Miles Goldstein, a sophomore at Brandeis, said.
Goldstein and Hayleigh Rose are both sophomores at Brandeis who attended the vigil, and who had almost taken the shuttle into Boston Saturday night.
“You kind of look at your friends differently, because it was sort of a random sample of the population that happened to be on the bus and anyone could have been there,” Rose said. “Everyone seems more precious, I guess.”
Goldstein said Mark was a friend of a friend, and described her as a bright young woman.
She was “funny, entertaining, the kind of person you could rely on,” Goldstein said.
Investigators said the shuttle bus, operated by Medford-based Joseph’s Transportation, routinely takes students into Boston and was returning to campus when it struck a tree Saturday night. Most of the 30 people on board attend Brandeis, although a Wellesley student was also on board at the time, the historically women’s college confirmed.
Brandeis canceled classes ahead of the Thanksgiving break, and students have used the time to support each other.
“It was been heartening to know we can still come together in the way we used to,” Goldstein said.
The investigation is ongoing, and Waltham Police ask anyone who may have witnessed or have video of the crash to reach out.
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