A bus crashed into six vehicles slowing for a work zone on southbound Interstate 95 in Stafford County, Virginia, before dawn Friday, killing five people and sending 44 others to hospitals. State police said the crash happened at about 2:35 a.m. near Quantico after the bus failed to slow with traffic approaching the work zone.
Four of the dead were in one car that caught fire, authorities said. They were identified as a 45-year-old man, a 44-year-old woman, a 13-year-old girl and a 7-year-old boy from Greenfield, Massachusetts. The fifth victim was a 25-year-old woman from Worcester, Massachusetts. All five people who died were in vehicles hit by the bus.
Police said about 34 passengers were on the bus, which was traveling from New York to North Carolina. Jing S. Dong, 48, of Staten Island, New York, was identified as the driver, and charges were pending. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Dong was an American citizen originally from China and had received his commercial driver's license in New York two years ago. Duffy also said the driver does not speak English, a point that sits uneasily alongside the identification and licensing details released by authorities.
Mary Washington Healthcare said it received 19 patients from the crash, including seven sent to its trauma center in Fredericksburg and 12 taken to its hospital in Stafford. Police said three of the injured were in critical condition. Peyton Vogel, a state police spokesman, said, “We’ve got patients in multiple hospitals. We’ve got the driver at a hospital here,” and added, “I’ve got to say, this is one of the most tragic things I’ve ever seen. Absolutely tragic.”
The National Transportation Safety Board said it was sending a go-team to investigate, while federal officials said they were looking into New York licensing records, training documents and the driver’s history. The bus was operated by E&P Travel Inc. of Kings Mountain, North Carolina, which federal safety records listed as satisfactory and showed had one injury accident in the previous two years. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration site said the company operated four vehicles and had 11 drivers.
The central question now is what caused the bus to fail to slow in time for the work zone. The answer will determine whether this was a fatal mistake, a training failure or something else entirely.
