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Seven people, including a six-year-old boy and his teenage sister, have been killed and 37 others injured in a bus crash in Mississippi early on Saturday morning.
The accident happened at around 12.40am when a 2018 Volvo Commercial passenger bus was traveling westbound left the roadway, experienced a tire failure and overturned on Interstate 20 in Warren County, the Mississippi Highway Patrol said.
The vehicle had been registered to Regiomontanos Autobuses, a US-based bus company, and was heading from Atlanta to Dallas, with 41 passengers and two drivers on board at the time.
Many of the passengers were not wearing seatbelts, Warren County Coroner Doug L Huskey said in a phone call with The Independent. The bus did have seatbelts on it.
Huskey said that his office is still working to identify all of the victims killed in the tragedy, with three males and two males so far identified.
All seven of the victims are from Latin America, including Guatemala.
Among them is a six-year-old boy and his 16-year-old sister who were traveling on the bus with their mother, Huskey said.
The girl was pronounced dead on the scene along with five other individuals. The boy was taken to a local hospital where he succumbed to his injuries. Their mother survived the accident.
The preliminary manner of death for the victims is blunt force trauma injuries.
Huskey said that his office will not be releasing the victims’ identities until next of kin are notified.
In total, 36 passengers were transported to hospitals in Vicksburg and Jackson where some remain in critical condition.
“Anytime you have people injured or killed, it’s tragic but when you have a situation like this where you have multiple fatalities and multiple injuries, it makes it even worse,” Warren County Sheriff Martin Pace told CNN affiliate WAPT.
“This crash remains under investigation by the Mississippi Highway Patrol and the Commercial Transportation Enforcement Division,” the Mississippi Highway Patrol said.
The National Transportation Safety Board said it would be sending a “go-team” to conduct a safety investigation into the crash.
