A bus traveling along a California highway here slammed into a tractor-trailer on Sunday morning, killing at least 13 people and injuring dozens more, according to the California Highway Patrol.
At a news conference on Sunday afternoon, Jim Abele, a chief with the California Highway Patrol, said that the tour bus was heading back to Los Angeles after a trip to a casino when it rammed into the back of the tractor-trailer shortly after 5 a.m. The driver of the bus was among those killed, he said.
“The speed of the bus was so significant that when it hit the back of the big rig, the trailer itself entered 15 feet into the bus,” Chief Abele said.
He said that the crash, which took place on Interstate 10 close to Palm Springs, was highly unusual in the amount of people killed and injured.
“In almost 35 years, I’ve never been to a crash where there’s been 13 confirmed fatal accidents,” he said. “So it’s tough. It’s not an easy thing.”
Thirty-one of the bus’s 44 passengers, many of whom were asleep at the time of the crash, were taken to hospitals. The majority of the people killed had been sitting in the front section of the bus. Chief Abele said that the majority of the passengers were Hispanic.
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