Five Killed, 60 Injured in Massive PA Turnpike Pileup

Jan. 6, 2020
A New York City bus lost control along the Pennsylvania Turnpike in Mount Pleasant Township, causing a chain-reaction accident involving three tractor-trailers.

Five people diedincluding a 9-year-old Brooklyn girl— and at least 60 were injured when a Chinatown bus went out of control Sunday on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, sparking a massive pileup involving three tractor-trailers.

The deadly chain reaction crash started at about 3:40 a.m., when a bus owned by N.J.-based Z & D Tour Inc. tried to negotiate a curve and rolled over in Mount Pleasant Township, about 30 miles east of Pittsburgh.

The victims include three New York City residents aboard the busJaremy Vazquez, 9, of Brooklyn and Eileen Zelis Aria, 35, of the Bronx, who were passengers, and Shuang Qing Feng, 58, of Queens, the bus driver, said the Westmoreland County, Pa. Coroner.

Toxicology results for Feng won't be available for several weeks, the coroner's office said.

Two UPS drivers, Dennis Kehler, 48, and Daniel Kepner, 53, were also among the dead, the company said. "Both were driving together in a tractor-trailer vehicle out of our Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, operating center," UPS said in a statement.

Though records show the bus is owned by Z & D, its livery identified it as belonging to a company called Ohio Coach, which runs bus service from Canal St. in Manhattan to points in West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio. The company's westbound buses operate overnight, its web page says.

The bus was bound for Cincinnati, said authorities. Ohio Bus charges $80 for a ticket from New York to Cincinnati.

"That bus went up an embankment, rolled over, and then was subsequently struck by two tractor trailers," said Pennsylvania State Trooper Stephen Limani. "Another tractor trailer collided with those tractor trailers, and then there was a passenger car that was also involved in that crash."

The crash shut down all lanes of traffic on the turnpike for miles,

Two crash survivors of the crash were in critical condition, said Limani. The victims ranged from children as young as 7 to adults in their 60s.

Many of the victims aren't from the U.S. and don't speak English, Limani said. "Some of them are Japanese speaking, and some of them are Spanish-speaking," he said.

As of November 2018, Z & D Tour operated eight buses, employed 15 drivers, and had a satisfactory rating with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, records show. None of its buses were involved in any reported crashes over the past two years.

Limani said that some drivers noticed a change in weather, with some precipitation, when the crash happened, but couldn't say that factored in the incident.

The National Transportation Safety Board is assisting the investigation.

One of the crashed trucks, a FedEx tractor trailer, spilled packages across the roadway. The pile-up shut down all lanes of traffic on the turnpike for miles.

"I haven't personally witnessed a crash of this magnitude in 20 years," Pennsylvania Turnpike spokesman Carl DeFebo told Pittsburgh TV station WTAE, calling it the worst accident in his decades-long tenure with the turnpike. "It's horrible."

Buses that pick up or drop off passengers in Chinatown have a checkered safety record.

A bus operated by Tao Travel Inc. of Brooklyn crashed in Virginia in March, killing two people. And 15 people died in March 2011 when a World Wide Tours bus crashed in the Bronx as it was returning to Chinatown from the Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut.

The driver of the World Wide Tours bus, Ophadell Williams, was dangerously sleep-deprived, investigators found. He was convicted of a aggravated unlicensed operation of a vehicle and sentenced to time served and a $500 fine.

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©2020 New York Daily News

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