Four students from Missouri S&T killed in car accident

ROLLA, Mo. | Four students at the Missouri University of Science and Technology are dead and a fifth is hospitalized in critical condition after a weekend wreck near Iberia.

Friends say the students were all from India and had gone to the Lake of the Ozarks to go shopping when the wreck happened Sunday morning on Missouri 42.

The Missouri State Highway Patrol says a car driven by one of the students crossed the center line and was struck by a pickup truck.

The driver, 22-year-old Murali Bottu, of Chittoor, India, was the car’s sole survivor. Four passengers in his car were dead at the scene. The victims were 24-year-old Srupen Reddy Velumula; 22-year-old Sri Harsha Chitturi; 21-year-old Srikanth Ravi; and 23-year-old Dheeraj Gudlawar.

Bottu and Velumula graduated Friday night with master’s degrees.