One person was killed and 32 people were injured, including two critically, when a tour bus crashed into an SUV on a Los Angeles area freeway early Sunday, officials said. The SUV appeared to have stopped, perhaps after becoming disabled, on State Route 60, reports the Los Angeles Times. The lone occupant of the SUV died after the vehicle became engulfed in flames following the crash just after 5am in the Hacienda Heights area, about 20 miles east of downtown LA, the California Highway Patrol said in a news release. CHP Officer Zachary Salazar said 32 people were taken to hospitals, most with injuries ranging from moderate to minor, reports the AP.
A passenger on the bus, Joe Runnel, told KTLA-TV that people were "begging for mercy" in the moments after the crash that closed two lanes of the freeway for several hours. "I was thrown from the back seat of the bus to the floor about three or four seats down," Runnel said. "Glass was on me … there was a lot of hollering." The preliminary investigation suggests that the SUV became disabled for unknown reasons in one of the freeway's lanes, and the tour bus then slammed into it. After the impact, the bus veered to the right across all lanes and collided with the guardrail along the shoulder, the CHP news release said.
There was significant damage to the front of the bus, including a shattered windshield, though the fire did not spread to the larger vehicle, said the LA County Fire Department. The bus with more than 60 passengers was headed from the Indio area of the desert near Palm Springs to the Koreatown neighborhood of Los Angeles, officials said. (More car accident stories.)
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