Ft Wayne, IN - Nearly 1,500 students and staff packed a Taylor University chapel Thursday, sobbing and singing hymns hours after a tractor-trailer rig plowed into a university van (pictured at right) returning from a trip to Fort Wayne. Another crowd of more than 300 students attended a memorial in Eicher Student Commons on Taylor’s Fort Wayne campus, according to a report in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette.

Students at Taylor, an evangelical Christian college with a main campus about 45 miles southwest of Fort Wayne, learned of the van crash on Interstate 69 late Wednesday.

They held prayer vigils into the early-morning hours Thursday, awaiting the names of the victims.

By midmorning Thursday, campus’s main chapel was filled to capacity with mourners. Speakers quoted Scripture, their voices cracking. A table draped in black cloth stood in front of the podium, covered with five lit candles.

University President Eugene Habecker, whose inauguration was scheduled for today, became choked up as he addressed the gathering of most of the campus’ 1,850 students.

“It’s like we’re still waiting for a phone call that says, ‘This isn’t real,’ ” he said. “It’s like a very bad dream. No matter how we try to explain and rationalize it from every perspective, this is a human tragedy.”

Those killed in the crash worked for Taylor’s dining services and were returning from the Fort Wayne campus, where they had been preparing for a scholarship banquet that was part of Habecker’s inauguration ceremony, according to the article in the Journal Gazette.

State police Sgt. Rod Russell said it was unclear why the northbound truck crossed the median into the southbound lanes of I-69 about 10 miles from the Upland campus, colliding with the van’s passenger side. The 8 p.m. crash peeled open the side of the van, ejecting several of the occupants.

Russell said investigators were examining the tractor-trailer rig for signs of mechanical failure.

“We know what caused the crash – he crossed the median – but why he crossed it, that’s what we need to discern,” he said.

Troopers tried to interview the rig driver, Robert F. Spencer of Canton, Mich., and four survivors from the van, but many were heavily medicated and unable to provide an account of what happened, Russell said.

The Journal Gazette reported those killed as Taylor University employee Monica Felver, 53, of Hartford City, students Bradley J. Larson, 22, of Elm Grove, Wis.; Whitney E. Cerak, 18, of Gaylord, Mich.; Laurel E. Erb, 20, of St. Charles, Ill.; and Elizabeth A. Smith, 22, of Mount Zion, Ill.