Charter bus wreck kills 6 on way to Texas
NORTH LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — A charter bus ferrying workers from Michigan to Texas hit a bridge abutment Friday on Interstate 40, shearing off much of its roof and killing six people, according to Arkansas State Police.
The single-vehicle wreck occurred a little before 1 a.m. CT west of the U.S. 167 interchange. Three of the six killed had been ejected from the bus, one was partially ejected, and the other two died within the vehicle, said Col. Bill Bryant, head of the Arkansas State Police.
Six others were taken to area hospitals and were later released.
“There is no preliminary cause of crash at this time,” spokesman Bill Sadler of the Arkansas State Police said Friday afternoon.
Eight survivors were taken to a nearby hotel, said Bridgette Williams of the Arkansas Red Cross, which has been helping uninjured passengers.
Roberto Vasquez, 28, of Monroe, Mich., was driving the bus when it crashed, police said.
He and two other employees of Vasquez Citrus and Hauling Co., based in Lake Placid, Fla., were transporting 19 workers from Monroe, Mich., to Laredo, Texas, said Maj. Mike Foster of Arkansas State Police. Police did not discuss the nature of the laborers’ work.
The company had posted advertisements in the spring at a Michigan jobs site seeking seasonal farm workers whose employment would end in November.
The bus driver, licensed in Michigan, ran off the right side of highway, struck a wall and continued along until the vehicle struck the bridge, Foster said. Highway officials said the span remained structurally sound.
All drivers involved in fatal accidents are tested for drugs and alcohol in Arkansas, but officers have no indication that Vasquez was intoxicated, Foster said. At the time of the accident, light rain and a little fog were in the area after a heavy storm had passed through, but it wasn’t immediately known if weather played a role in the accident.
The National Transportation Safety Board and the Department of Homeland Security both will be involved in the investigation, Bryant said. Officers were working with the Mexican Consulate to notify next of kin though the victims’ nationalities have not been confirmed.
None of the victims' names have been released.
Though the bus has retained it Continental Charters logo, a spokesman for the Detroit-based company told WWJ-AM, Detroit, that he had sold the vehicle last week to Vasquez Citrus and Hauling, which was interested in running charters from Michigan to the South.
“I sold the bus to him, he came in and paid me $8,000,” Continental Charters spokesman Jeff Lawson said. “He told me he was going to run the bus from here to Texas and here to Florida. So he needed the bus to run people, I’m guessing, from Detroit here to down there.”
The company apparently disregarded orders to remove the Continental logo from the side of the bus before putting it into service, Lawson told the radio station.
Continental Charters did not have any scheduled routes Thursday in Arkansas and does not regularly operate in the area, he said.
Traffic on the interstate, a major east-west artery, was snarled for hours, but all debris and the bus were towed away before daybreak.
Contributing: Elisha Anderson, Detroit Free Press; The Associated Press
