The Costello Family

We want to support the Costello family as they face extremely serious circumstances. As many of you know, on Friday, September 29th, Mizzou Club Swim was traveling to compete at a swim meet at Ohio State. Four Mizzou freshman, John Costello, Weston Hemmerling, Sarah Tague, and Anja Dangelmaier, were caught up in an accident involving a semi-tanker carrying ammonia gas. The accident resulted in a hole being torn in the side of the tanker which released thousands of gallons of ammonia gas into the surrounding area. Although the students were not directly involved in the truck crash, they were still caught up in the horrible aftermath. The 4 students who had witnessed this immediately got out of the car and ran in an attempt to protect themselves from the harmful gas spilling out into the air. As they all ran in different directions they ended up falling into ditches on the side of the road where they remained until being found by EMS. Weston was found by EMS first and rushed to the hospital; before the others were found EMS had to wait for hazmat teams to show as the chemical cloud was too strong and dangerous. Sarah, Anja, and John were then airlifted to the hospital. *

The purpose of this fundraiser is to ease the financial burden of the Costello family as they navigate through this very difficult time. Rita Costello, John’s mother, is well-known as Arbor Creek Elementary’s beloved librarian.

*sources- Swimswam.com, KOMU.com, CNN.com