Federal agents seek to halt rash of casino bus crashes
LOS ANGELES — Rosa Ruiz returned from a gambling jaunt to San Diego before a week ago and was back on another bus that evening, headed for a desert casino.
Like others who routinely board buses bound for distant casinos, Ruiz wasn’t so much dreaming of striking it rich, just escaping her normal life for a few hours to socialize, snack and play the slots.
But this night out ended in disaster on the freeway near Palm Springs when the bus slammed into a tractortrailer in the predawn darkness last Sunday. Ruiz was killed along with 12 others, including the bus driver who also owned the USA Holiday bus. It was the latest in a growing number of casino bus tragedies around the country, from New York to Minnesota to Texas.
Fatalities involving casino buses have become so frequent that the National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates major crashes, is studying them for common patterns, said Earl Weener, an NTSB board member overseeing the crash probe of the USA Holiday bus.
As casinos have proliferated, buses ferrying gamblers have become a fixture. Many, like Ruiz, travel from big cities to out-of-the-way casinos and stay for as little as four hours before the buses head home.
The tours typically draw a similar demographic: older, lowerincome and, often, minorities. Many of those killed in the crash last weekend were Latinos, and they boarded the bus in the Koreatown neighborhood of Los Angeles.
“They don’t take off from the Santa Monica pier. They don’t take off from Beverly Hills,” said Dr. Timothy Fong, a psychiatry professor and co-director of gambling studies at UCLA.
Day and night, people line up at street corners, parking lots and fast food restaurants across the Los Angeles area where the buses arrive and depart for short casino trips.
At the Koreatown location where Ruiz, 53, embarked on her last journey, fellow travelers gathered this week to light votive candles, stick roses and daisies in the bark of a palm tree and remember their lost friends. All the while, buses pulled up to shuttle others to casinos in the desert or Santa Barbara and San Diego counties.
These curbside carriers are often mom-andpop operations that have proliferated in the U.S. for tours of all kinds, including gambling trips. Government regulators are stretched to try to ensure all are abiding by safety rules.
Attorney Katherine Harvey-Lee, who has sued bus operators, said casinos typically pay a per-passenger fee to smaller operations like USA Holiday, the one-bus operation owned by Teodulo Elias Vides, who was also the lone driver. Gamblers usually get $20 to $30 in tokens or casino credits.
Vides charged $20 for the roundtrip to Red Earth Casino, a barebones operation in the community of Thermal.
Investigators are looking at Vides’ relationship with the casino along with possible mechanical issues on the bus and what Vides did in the hours leading up to the crash to see whether alcohol or fatigue or some other factor might have contributed.