By Quentin Misiag
[email protected]

Republican presidential hopeful Ben Carson canceled several campaign stops Tuesday and today after a van transporting three Carson campaign volunteers and one staffer crashed in Iowa on Tuesday morning.

The van hit a patch of ice and flipped on its side when it was struck by another vehicle near Atlantic, according to a memo sent out by Carson’s national campaign.

“Three of the passengers, including the campaign staffer driving, are currently being checked out at Cass County Memorial Hospital in Atlantic, Iowa,” the campaign memo said.

One volunteer was transported to the trauma center at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha.

According to the Des Moines Register, 25-year-old Braden Joplin, a volunteer for Carson’s campaign, died from injuries suffered in the accident.

The other campaign staffer and volunteers, Drew McCall, Aaron Ohnemus, and Ryan Patrick Shellooe, were treated and released from the hospital, according to a press release from Carson’s campaign.

“A presidential candidate asks a lot of his or her volunteers, working long hours in the cold, under-appreciated. They are the unsung heroes of the political process,” Carson said in a statement realeased Tuesday evening. “The outpouring of support for Braden and his family from fellow candidates, as well as their staffs and volunteers, demonstrates that life will always transcend politics, and I thank them for their kind words.”

The State Patrol is investigating the crash, which occurred around 9:25 a.m. on Interstate 80 near Atlantic, officials in the state patrol’s Atlantic office said. No further information was available as of early Tuesday evening.

Light snow began moving across Iowa from the west to the western edge of the Des Moines metro area on Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service in Des Moines.

Carson’s staff said the candidate, a retired neurosurgeon by trade, spoke with the family of the volunteer being transported to Omaha and the attending physician.

He traveled to Omaha Tuesday afternoon to be with the family.

Prior to the crash, Carson was expected to return to Iowa on Thursday, with campaign swings through Glenwood and Atlantic, in the state’s southwestern region.

It is not yet known whether those upcoming events will be canceled.

He was in South Carolina Tuesday, where he had prior speaking engagements in Charleston and Mount Pleasant.

Some presidential hopefuls, including Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, as well as an official with Hillary Clinton’s campaign and Bernie Sanders’ campaign quickly took to social media Tuesday to express their support.