‘THEY HAD A GREAT DAY’

3 Storm-Chasing Oklahoma Meteorology Students Fatally Hit by Truck

The trio of University of Oklahoma students were pinned by the truck for hours on a trip home from Kansas, where they had been observing a tornado.

Three college students chasing a tornado in Kansas were killed in a car crash on the return trip home Friday night, according to the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety. The University of Oklahoma meteorology students—Nicholas Nair, 20; Gavin Short, 19; and Drake Brooks, 22—had been driving on a wet highway in Tonkawa, a city in Oklahoma close to the border, when their vehicle hydroplaned and was struck by a semi-truck traveling in the same direction. Emergency responders worked for more than five hours to extract the trio’s bodies from beneath the truck, which had pinned their Volkswagen Tiguan. The students were all pronounced dead at the scene, while the truck driver was treated for minor injuries at a nearby hospital.

Nair, Short, and Brooks had been part of a larger cohort of University of Oklahoma students who had crossed into Kansas to follow the severe weather. Their accident occurred just three hours after they witnessed a small tornado north of Herrington, which Nair and Short filmed and posted on social media. “They had a great day,” a friend and fellow meteorology student told KFOR. “They [called] their parents after and were telling them about how excited they were. Drake actually saw his first tornado yesterday.”