17 dead in Mexican bus crash

MEXICO CITY – An American citizen and members of a family traveling to Mexico from the U.S. for a funeral were among at least 17 passengers who died in a bus crash in western Mexico over the weekend.

The bus was carrying 35 passengers from the resort city of Puerto Vallarta to Guadalajara – including passengers of several detoured flights – when it went off a mountain road Saturday, bus company and government officials said.

The U.S. Embassy on Sunday confirmed that the crash killed U.S. citizen Jesus Morales Robles, 66, of Los Angeles.

Among the surviving passengers was Juan Antonio Quezada de la Cruz, who lives in Riverside, Calif., and was traveling with seven family members to attend their father’s funeral in Guadalajara. A sister and a 1-year-old nephew died in the crash, he said.

“I don’t know if the bus was going fast or if it skidded. I just felt a thud and tried to grab my nephew who was sitting next to me,” he said from a hospital bed in Tepic, a city in the western state of Nayarit.