Palm Springs, CA : No indication driver in deadly bus crash braked on October 19th 2016

Ana Car didn’t remember the sudden impact, only that she woke up among dead and injured passengers in a dark bus filled with screams of terror and agony.

The retired factory worker had spent an evening gambling at a desert casino and was sound asleep when the bus heading to Los Angeles smashed into the rear of a slow-moving semitrailer. The crash killed the bus driver and 12 passengers and injured 31 other people.

“I can’t believe how many died,” she said, sobbing Monday as she recovered from bumps, bruises and a sore back. “It was so horrible. These images are going to stay in my head for life.”

The National Transportation Safety Board was investigating the collision, which is one of the deadliest wrecks in California history.

The truck was creeping along at 5 mph because of utility work that had gone on throughout the night along Interstate 10 near Palm Springs. That’s when the bus, moving as fast as 65 mph, slammed into it, authorities said.

“There’s no indication whatsoever that the driver applied the brakes,” said California Highway Patrol Border Division Chief Jim Abele, citing the power of the impact and the fact that no skid marks were found.

Initial reports said four people were dead, but many bodies were later found in the front portion of the bus that ended up inside the trailer.

“They just kept pulling bodies stuck in between the seats,” he said. “It’s just due to this bus going so fast into the back of the truck. Why he did that, that’s what we’re trying to find out.”

Car, 61, was sitting toward the back of the bus when it rammed the truck about 5:15 a.m. Sunday. She awoke to find herself standing amid bodies flung everywhere. Those who could move were pushing and shoving in the pre-dawn darkness to climb out from under each other.

She clambered to a broken window to yell for help, panicked she would be trapped if the bus caught fire. Motorists who stopped to help pulled her out the broken window.

“I couldn’t stand when they got me out,” Car said. “I sat on the side of the road, watching them pull so many people out. I saw so much blood and two dead bodies. I was so scared.”

The NTSB planned to look into the history of the bus, its owner-driver and other circumstances, such as what the driver was doing during the four to five hours the bus was at the Red Earth Casino in the desert town of Thermal before making the 135-mile trip back to LA.

Teodulo Elias Vides owned the bus company, USA Holiday, and was the only driver, according to federal and state records. The 59-year-old had a valid commercial license and a clean record in recent years. And the bus had passed annual inspections.

The Riverside County sheriff-coroner’s office identified 12 of the 13 people killed. The dead included 10 women between 52 and 72, plus the driver and a 62-year-old man. One man remained unidentified. Most were from Los Angeles.

Four passengers remained hospitalized in critical condition, officials said.

One of the fatalities was Zoila Aguilera, 72, a retired cook who liked to head out every other weekend to play the slots for fun, said her grandson Bryan Ramirez.

Ramirez said he was having breakfast and watching a soccer game Sunday morning when his family heard the news of the crash. He said he immediately started calling his grandmother’s phone, hoping she would pick up.

Aguilera insisted on sitting near the front of the bus, rebuffing her son, Ramirez’s father, who tried to get her to sit toward the rear.

“She loved to sit in the front. There was no changing her mind,” Ramirez said. “She just felt safer there.”

Car said she ended up toward the back of the bus because she bought a $20 last-minute ticket after running into her friend, Rosa Ruiz, who persuaded her to take the journey to a different casino that night.


Source :
No indication driver in deadly bus crash braked