Two killed in bus crash near Memphis
Authorities blame icy roads, severe weather
BYHALIA, Mississippi — A tour bus overturned Wednesday on an icy highway near Memphis, leaving two people dead and 44 others aboard with injuries, as a pre-winter storm blasted parts of the South, authorities said.
The Mississippi Highway Patrol said in a statement that the bus traveling from Huntsville, Ala., to the Tunica area of Mississippi when it crashed at 12:35 p.m. on Interstate 269 in the northern part of the state. A statement from agency spokesman Capt. Johnny Poulos also said the crash was “weather-related.” He said the injured were taken to several hospitals with varying injuries.
The bus was operated by Teague VIP Express, in Anniston, Ala. The tour bus was being towed later Wednesday from the crash site. The bus windows appeared mostly missing or shattered and a smell of gasoline hung in the air. Large scratches and other damage were visible on the driver’s side as workers cleared the highway of debris.
The company has only three buses and three drivers, according to licensing information from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, and it hasn’t had any crashes in the last two years.
A hospital spokeswoman said 19 passengers were transported from the crash site near Byhalia to Baptist Memorial Hospital-DeSoto in Southaven, Miss., and three were in serious condition. She said seven others were taken to Baptist Memorial Hospital-Collierville in that Tennessee suburb of Memphis.
An additional 18 passengers were taken to Methodist Hospital Olive Branch in that Mississippi city, said spokeswoman Mary Alice Taylor. The hospital couldn’t immediately provide conditions of those patients. The crash site is about 35 miles southeast of Memphis.
The identities of the dead and injured were not immediately released, and the specific end destination wasn’t disclosed in Tunica, a casino resort area of northwest Mississippi.
It was the second charter bus excursion to a Mississippi casino town to end in fatalities in the last two years. A bus carrying Texas senior citizens to a Gulf Coast casino in Biloxi, Miss., was stuck on train tracks and slammed by a freight train in March 2017. The crash resulted in four deaths and 38 injuries. The National Transportation Safety Board found that the probable cause of the crash was the failure of a railroad and the city to work together to improve the safety of a sharply humped railroad crossing, even though it was well known that vehicles occasionally got stuck there.
NTSB spokesman Keith Holloway said the federal agency hasn’t determined whether it will investigate Wednesday’s crash.
On Wednesday, the Mississippi Department of Transportation reported icing on roads and bridges in 10 northern counties from the storm. A wintry mix of snow and sleet prompted some school, church and museum closings in west Tennessee during the day.
After days of heavy rain and storms along a cold front, flurries left a thin layer of snow atop vehicles.