On Monday, hundreds of students from Hartford and Rocky Hill mourned Vikas Parikh, who was killed in a school bus crash on Saturday. A funeral service is planned for Tuesday to honor the teen who died when the bus he was riding in crashed on Interstate 84 over the weekend and went down an embankment.
Parikh was one of 16 students traveling by school bus to a robotics competition when it collided with another car around 8 a.m. on Saturday, hit the guardrail, and plunged 20 feet into this embankment.
Many were hurt. Parikh was the only one killed.
Monday was the first day back to school after the tragic crash that killed the 16-year-old from Rocky Hill.
“He was like one of those kids that I personally thought, this kid’s going to change the world somehow,” Josh Ferrebee, of Rocky Hill said.
Parikh was a junior and an honor student at Rocky Hill High School Rocky Hill. He also took classes at the Greater Hartford Academy of Mathematics and Science. Rocky Hill Mayor Anthony LaRosa described him as one of the school's "best and brightest."
Ferrebee recalled how Parikh walked to the high school for classes when he was in seventh grade “because they didn't have anything high enough in the school for him.”
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Leah Scully, of Rocky Hill, said students are having difficulty with news of his death.
“It could have been any one of us, so it's really scary to think that someone our age, their life got cut so short,” Scully said.
“I was kind of almost dreading coming to school today because, I know it's gonna be like hard for everyone,” Amber Kwiatkoski, of Rocky Hill, said.
State police are still investigating what led to the crash.
On Monday, the medical examiner ruled the cause of Parikh’s death as blunt traumatic head injury.
A funeral service will be held on Tuesday at 10 a.m. at Carmon Windsor Funeral Home, 807 Bloomfield Ave., Windsor.
The family has requested that in lieu of flowers, memorial donations be made to Hartford Area Habitat for Humanity, P.O. Box 1933, Hartford, CT 06144 or by visiting www.hartfordhabitat.org.
Online condolences are posted on the funeral home’s Web site. www.carmonfuneralhome.com.
