Emergency personnel assist victims at the scene of a bus crash Sunday near Forest Falls, Calif. A tour bus crashed with a pickup truck on a rural mountain highway in Southern California on Sunday night, killing multiple people and injuring dozens of others, a fire department spokesman said. The accident occurred around 6:30 p.m. near the town of Forest Falls, about 80 miles east of Los Angeles, San Bernardino County Fire Department spokesman Eric Sherwin said.YUCAIPA, Calif. – The scene could hardly have been more frightening for a Pennsylvania high school student just returning from a tour of Harvard University when the bus she was on slammed into an overpass, injuring dozens of passengers.
She did what most kids would do. She called her mother.
“She was screaming and crying and saying that the roof was caving in and that she couldn’t see anything, and she hit her head and she hurt her arm,” said Teresa Merrigan, describing the call from her daughter Alana.
Alana and the 41 others on the Calvary Coach bus had just begun the hours-long journey back to the Philadelphia area late Saturday. The driver, Samuel J. Jackson, was trying to navigate Boston’s confusing maze of roads and rotaries, famously challenging to out-of-towners. He looked down at his GPS and looked back up and saw the bridge but was too close to avoid hitting it, Ray Talmedge, owner of the Philadelphia-based bus company, told WCAU-TV.
Thirty-five people were injured in the crash, Massachusetts state police said. One remained hospitalized in critical condition, four were in stable condition, one was in serious condition and one was awaiting discharge on Sunday night, they said.