A bus rammed into slow-moving vehicles in Virginia early Friday morning, killing five people and injuring dozens, including the driver. The crash occurred around 2:35 a.m. on southbound I-95 near Quantico, Virginia in Stafford County. Police said all five people who died were in the vehicles that were hit by the bus, and 44 people were taken to hospitals, including three in critical condition.
A preliminary investigation shows southbound vehicles were slowing down due to the upcoming construction zone, state police said in a press release. A bus failed to slow down for traffic and collided with six vehicles. Police said that there were about 34 passengers in the bus.
Federal Transportation Administration spokesman Peyton Vogel, who was present at the scene, said that our patients are admitted to several hospitals. The driver has been admitted to a hospital here. I must say, this is one of the saddest incidents I have ever seen. Four of those killed were in the same car which caught fire.
State police said the dead included a 45-year-old man, a 44-year-old woman, a 13-year-old girl and a 7-year-old boy, all of whom were residents of Greenfield, Massachusetts. The fifth victim, a 25-year-old woman from Worcester, Massachusetts, was in an SUV that was struck by the bus. State police identified the bus driver as Jing S. Dong, 48, of Staten Island, New York. Officials said charges against him are still pending.
Mary Washington Healthcare said that 19 patients injured in the accident came to it. It told online that seven of these patients were taken to its trauma center in Fredericksburg, from where four were discharged and three are undergoing treatment. Of these, the condition of one was serious and the condition of two was critical. 12 patients were taken to his hospital in Stafford, from where they were later discharged.
The National Transportation Safety Board said online that it was sending a team to investigate the safety of the accident and that a spokesperson would be at the scene. According to state transportation advisories, the southbound lanes had reopened by noon, but traffic was still backed up for a few miles. Passengers told about the chaos inside the bus. Two injured and terrified passengers described what happened inside the bus in interviews with the Richmond Times-Dispatch outside the hospital.
Rhonda Wright and Wayne Tobin said they knew something was wrong long before the accident. He described the driver as negligent and said that the bus was traveling at a very high speed before colliding with slow moving traffic. He said the initial collision was just the beginning of his horror – the bus kept going, hitting vehicle after vehicle, passengers screaming, smoke filling the interior and luggage flying into the air.
Wright said, the bus kept moving and kept hitting vehicles. We felt as if we were trapped in a death trap as there was no way to stop the bus. When the bus finally stopped, people started running out of the windows. Tobin said he came out covered in the blood of other passengers. Wright said one man’s teeth were broken.
“I was 64 years old, and I thought I was going to die,” Wright said. I’m just happy I’m alive today. Tobin was headed to Raleigh for his mother’s funeral. Wright was going to Greensboro to meet family. Both their phones and identity cards were lost in the wreckage of the bus. My purse, my identity card, my phone are all there. You cannot do anything without your identity card.
The bus is operated by Kings Mountain, North Carolina-based E&P Travel, Inc. Done through. According to records from the North Carolina Secretary of State’s office, the company was founded by Shuo Liu on November 24, 2023. Liu is also listed as the registered agent. According to the FMCSA website, the company operates four vehicles and has 11 drivers.
It’s too early to determine the exact cause of Friday’s crash, but federal officials have been grappling with interstate passenger bus safety issues for decades. Following a series of passenger bus accidents in 2008 that killed 41 people, the US Department of Transportation published a Motorcoach Safety Action Plan.
The NTSB investigated 16 fatal motorcoach crashes between June 1998 and January 2008 and found that driver-related problems, such as fatigue, health problems, and inattention, were responsible for 56 percent of the crashes. The agency said driver-related problems were responsible for 60 percent of the deaths in these crashes.
Recommended actions included a program of driver history screening prior to employment and the creation of a national drug and alcohol testing database so that motorcoach operators can determine if drivers have any history of violations of DOT’s alcohol or drug regulations.
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