The New York State Police on Saturday released the names of the five passengers who were killed after a tour bus traveling to New York City from Niagara Falls, N.Y., crashed and flipped over on a highway outside Buffalo on Friday afternoon.
The deceased, whose ages ranged from 22 to 65, include a person from Madhubani, India, three people from New Jersey and a Chinese student at Columbia University, according to the police.
The release of the names comes roughly 24 hours after the deadly crash on the New York State Thruway, which sent the tour bus toppling into a ditch, ejecting many of its passengers and pinning some beneath the vehicle, officials said.
The people who died in the crash were:
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Shankar Kumar Jha, 65, of Madhubani, India
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Pinki Changrani, 60, of East Brunswick, N.J.
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Zhang Xiaolan, 55, and Jian Mingli, 56, of Jersey City, N.J.
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Xie Hongzhuo, 22, of Beijing
The crash took place at around 12:30 p.m. near Pembroke, N.Y., roughly 30 miles east of Buffalo, according to the authorities. The bus, which was carrying 54 people, appeared to drive into the median, correct course and then overturn, rolling into the embankment on the side of the road.
Erie County Medical Center in Buffalo received 21 patients from the crash. Eleven remained at the hospital in stable condition on Saturday, including five in the trauma intensive care unit. Three more patients were admitted for observation. Another seven were discharged from the hospital on Friday.
Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, N.Y., received six people from the crash. Two were treated for critical injuries, and three remained in stable condition on Saturday. One of the patients was treated and discharged.
Two patients were also taken to Rochester Regional Health, where they were treated and then released on Friday, a spokesman said. Additional patients were transported to United Memorial Medical Center in Batavia, N.Y., and to Oishei Children’s Hospital in Buffalo. Officials at these hospitals did not immediately respond to requests for information on the patients.
The cause of the crash was under investigation and did not appear to involve a mechanical failure or the impairment of the driver, said Maj. Andre J. Ray of the State Police, who spoke at a news conference on Friday. Investigators believe the driver, identified as Bin Shao, 55, of Flushing, Queens, became distracted and lost control of the vehicle, the authorities said.
The bus was the only vehicle involved in the crash.
The crash ejected many passengers from the bus, while others were trapped underneath. The police said on Friday that it appeared that many passengers were not wearing seatbelts at the time of the accident.
The bus operator, identified by the authorities as M&Y Tour Inc., based on Staten Island, has a somewhat better safety record than many of its peers in the industry, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.
In the two years before the day of the crash, the department inspected the company’s buses 43 times. On nine occasions it found violations serious enough for the bus to be temporarily removed from service, according to government records, representing a failure rate of 21 percent. The industry average is 22.2 percent, according to the Transportation Department.
Inspectors also tested M&Y drivers 60 times during the same period, determining on one occasion that a driver needed to be removed from service — a failure rate of 1.7 percent. Over the last two years, the failure rate among bus drivers nationally was 6.6 percent, the department found.
M&Y’s safety record was described as “satisfactory” — the highest rating — during its most recent review, conducted last September by the department’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. The company obtained $5 million worth of insurance to cover bodily injury and property damage as required, according to department records.
Christopher Maag is a reporter covering the New York City region for The Times.
Maia Coleman is a reporter for The Times covering the New York Police Department and criminal justice in the New York area.
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