The lone bus belonging to a mom-and-pop tour operator careened off an interstate and overturned on Saturday, killing 15 Chicago-area travellers on their way to a Mississippi casino. Witnesses told police the bus, which carried family and friends of the tour-company owner, was drifting.
The bus was about 50km short of its destination in Tunica, Mississippi, when the crash happened at about 5am on Saturday on Interstate 55 in north-eastern Arkansas, near Memphis, Tennessee.
Thirty-one people were aboard, and the remaining 16 passengers all were injured, many critically. Some of the dead were found crushed beneath the bus after wrecker crews pulled it upright, state police spokesperson Bill Sadler said.
Among the dead were the bus owner’s brother, who had been driving, and the owner’s wife. The driver, Herbert Walters, is believed to have been in his sixties.
Witnesses told police the bus drifted off the road near a point where the interstate veers to take travellers into Memphis.
The bus, ”just kind of faded over there”, said Corporal Mickey Strayhorn of the Arkansas State Police. ”There was not really any erratic driving before this occurred.”
A light mist was falling at the time of the crash, but visibility did not appear to be significantly limited, police said.
The impact tore off a section of the bus roof, and emergency workers had to shear off the rest of the top to reach a trapped passenger.
Tracks in the grass showed the bus went straight rather than around the curve, then hit a ditch and flipped over. There were no skid marks.
”They had to cut it [the roof] free from the bus, but it was peeled off more or less,” Strayhorn said.
Other victims, thrown from the bus, were scattered among grass and weeds at an interstate exchange, along with popped-open suitcases and other belongings.
Sergeant David Moore, describing the force of the impact, said it would be ”similar to an explosion. There were people everywhere.”
Assistant Fire Chief John Burns of West Memphis said when he and a crew of firefighters arrived at the scene, ”there was nobody walking around — everybody was laying down. It wasn’t the scene where you see everybody screaming and crying for help.”
State police had a partial list of passengers and were going through debris to identify the others.
Sadler said 14 people died at the scene. Hospitals reported receiving a total of 17 people, one of whom later died.
Sandy Snell, spokesperson for the Medical Centre at Memphis, said the hospital was treating eight victims, including three in very critical condition, three in critical condition and two with serious injuries.
Witnesses and survivors told police the trip was uneventful, then ”the next thing we knew, we were off the road”, Sadler said.
The bus went down a slight incline and flipped as it cut through a ditch, stopping about 90m from the highway.
Roosevelt Walters, who operates Walters Charter and Tours of Chicago, said his wife was aboard the bus because she had organised the trip for a group of friends, retirees and teachers. He said his brother, Herbert Walters, was driving.
Without hours of learning about the crash, Walters also learned that his wife and brother had been killed.
”This thing that happened, nobody has an answer for. All we can do is direct them to God,” said the Reverend Curtis Reed, who is serving as a family spokesperson.
Police cautioned that investigators may not know what happened for weeks.
”They’ll be so many things they’ll need to look at,” Sadler said.
Both Roosevelt and Herbert Walters held commercial driver’s licences issued to drivers of large trucks and tour buses, said Dave Druker, a spokesperson for the Illinois secretary of state’s office.
The group had left home on Friday evening and planned to spend the weekend at a casino, then return to Chicago by Monday night.
The bus made the trip twice a year, and most of those in the group knew each other. Walters said his stepson, his sister-in-law, a cousin and his neighbours were also aboard. — Sapa-AP