ARGYLE TOWNSHIP (AP) – A summer camp’s van pulling a trailer loaded with canoes overturned on Interstate 95 on Monday, killing a 15-year-old boy and injuring 12 other people, state police said.

It took at least seven ambulances to transport the victims to hospitals after the van that had been on the road through the night overturned 15 miles north of Bangor, said Stephen McCausland of the Maine Department of Public Safety.

The van from Camp Seven Springs in Bethel, N.Y., was carrying 11 boys from 14 to 18 years old and two counselors, McCausland said.

The boy who died was identified as Gedalya Rosenblatt, who studied at Shaarei Arazim of Monsey, N.Y., said Eli Moskovitz, one of the directors in Spring Valley, N.Y.

Members of Bangor’s Jewish community went to the hospital to comfort victims, who were from different yeshivas but came together for camp.

Initial reports were that the van left New York about 8 p.m. Sunday and most of the van’s occupants were asleep when it drifted off the highway and into the median, where it crashed at 7 a.m. in Argyle Township, McCausland said.

As of late Monday afternoon, all of the survivors were being treated at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor. One was in critical condition and one was serious, while the remaining 10 were in good or fair condition, a spokesman said.

The camp counselor who was driving, Yehoshua Hoffman, was seriously injured, McCausland said. Hoffman had apparently switched places behind the wheel with the other counselor, Yosef Franklin, an hour or so before the crash, he said.

After the crash, the northbound lanes of I-95 were disrupted for about six hours as the van, five canoes and debris were removed, McCausland said. The van was towed to Augusta for examination and troopers were reconstructing the crash.

Word spread quickly through New York’s Orthodox Jewish community.

A private plane left from New York’s Long Island to retrieve the victim’s body for burial within 24 hours in keeping with Jewish custom, according to Vos Iz Neias, a blog that describes itself as “The Voice of the New York Orthodox Jewish Community.”

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