Federal safety investigators are examining the wreckage of a charter bus headed from Niagara Falls to New York City that veered off the road and crashed Friday afternoon, killing five people and injuring many more on I-90 in the Genesee County town of Pembroke, New York.
Those killed include a Columbia University student from Beijing, Xie Hongzhuo, 21, as well as three New Jersey residents, Jian Mingli, 56 and Zhang Xiaolan, 55, from Jersey City and Pinki Changrani, 60, from East Brunswick. The other person identified is Shankar Kumar Jha, 65, from Madhubani, India.
“We are devastated by the death of one of our students, Xie Hongzhuo, in the tragic bus accident near Buffalo on Friday,” Columbia University spokesperson Adam Stephan wrote in a statement. “This heartbreaking loss is felt deeply across our community. We are in close contact with her family and offering them our full support.”
The tour bus was from the Staten Island-based company M&Y Tour and had 54 people on board at the time of the crash, including the driver and a tour guide.
The company didn’t respond to a request for comment.
New York state police reported Friday that the driver of the bus, Bin Shao, 55, from Flushing, Queens, had no signs of impairment. The National Transportation Safety Board will look at whether fatigue or distracted driving played a role in the crash.
Seconds before the crash, the bus veered across the median before returning to the travel lane and driving off the road, according to the NTSB. Many passengers were ejected as the bus rolled over.
The NTSB has an onboard event data recorder, which could help investigators determine what happened just seconds before the driver lost control.
Tom Chapman with the NTSB said his team is investigating whether the passengers were wearing seat belts.
“Part of our investigation will be to determine the extent to which seat belts were being used, and the extent of which the lack of seat belt use may have been a factor in some of the passengers being ejected,” he said at a news briefing Saturday afternoon.
A New York state law requires charter buses made after 2016 to be equipped with seat belts. The bus involved in the crash is from 2005, so it’s unclear to investigators if the seat belts were required. State police reported on Friday that the tour bus had no signs of mechanical failure.
The NTSB expects a preliminary report will be released in 30 days with a full report to come in one to two years.
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