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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Texas bus crash kills 15 pilgrims

Unlicensed charter taking church group to Missouri festival

An emergency worker wrestles with the steering wheel on a charter bus that was crushed when it skidded off a highway in Sherman, Texas, early Friday.  (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)
Associated Press

SHERMAN, Texas – An unlicensed charter bus carrying a Vietnamese-American Catholic group on a pilgrimage to a religious festival blew an illegally treaded tire and skidded off a highway early Friday, killing at least 15 people and injuring dozens, authorities said.

The bus, en route from Houston to Missouri with 55 people aboard, smashed into a guardrail and tipped over along the edge of the road at about 12:45 a.m., crushing one side of the vehicle and scattering luggage, clothes, a sandal and a blood-soaked pillow across the grass and pavement.

Ten people were taken to the hospital by helicopter, and some were in critical condition late Friday.

Passenger Leha Nguyen, 45, said passengers were dozing off when she heard a noise and screaming, and opened her eyes.

“Somebody was laying on my legs. A lady next to me, she had her arm crushed up. The lady who was on my left, a man was on top of her,” she said at a hospital. She said nobody had been wearing seat belts, and people were strewn all over. A television had fallen on one person.

Most of the passengers were from the Vietnamese Martyrs Church and two other mostly Vietnamese congregations in Houston. They were on their way to Carthage, Mo., for an annual open-air festival honoring the Virgin Mary.

The bus ran off the road about 65 miles north of Dallas, close to the Oklahoma line. The right front tire, which blew out, had been retreaded in violation of safety standards, said Debbie Hersman, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board. The tread had separated from the tire itself in a process called delamination.

It is legal to retread such tires but not on the axle that steers the bus, Hersman said.