Fatal Ste. Genevieve crash followed bachelor party

FARMINGTON, Mo. -- A weekend wedding was interrupted by tragedy when a groom and members of his wedding party plunged off a 30-foot cliff in a Jeep.

The wreck killed two men, including the groom's brother, 26-year-old Geoffrey Francis of Farmington. Benton Chandler, 25, of Fayette, also was declared dead at the scene early Saturday, the Missouri State Highway patrol said. Four other passengers were injured.

At least seven men were in the Jeep when the driver got lost on a dirt trail on a private farm and drove off the cliff, the patrol said.

The men were celebrating the groom's last night as a bachelor. Daniel Francis, 22, was going to be married Saturday in Farmington to Leigh Hardy, 19, of Park Hills. The wedding was postponed.

The crash occurred about 2 a.m. Saturday, just hours after the wedding party had attended a rehearsal dinner in Farmington. After the dinner, the groom and two of his brothers joined four of their friends for some trail riding on farmland owned by the parents of one of the men.

"The boys have been doing these trail rides for years and years and years," said the bride's father, Mark Hardy. "Instead of going out to a night club and being out on the road late at night, they went to the farm."

The crash occurred in Ste. Genevieve County on a farm owned by Gary Busenbark. The driver of the Jeep was identified as his son, Brock Busenbark, 22.

One of the crash survivors, Gregory Ward, 22, said nobody had been drinking.

"We were just having a good time," he told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in a telephone interview from his hospital bed in St. Louis.

They had driven into a thickly wooded area on the farm and made a hard right turn, into what they thought was a clearing in the trees. It was a cliff.