newjerseynewsroom.com

BY ALICIA CRUZ

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

Two people are dead and at least five wounded following a Monday night bus crash that forced the closure of the outer southbound lanes of New Jersey’s Turnpike for at least six hours.

MSNBC reported that the chartered bus, operated by Super Luxury Tours Inc. of Wilkes-Barre, Pa., was carrying approximately 45 passengers from Lower Manhattan to Philadelphia when the 9 p.m. crash occurred just south of Exit 9 in East Brunswick.

The driver, identified as Wei Wang, of Forest Hills, New York, was thrown through the windshield and pronounced dead at the scene, State Police Sgt. Stephen Jones told the Star-Ledger.

The second person killed has been identified as 20-year-old Troy Nguyen, of Royserford, Pennsylvania. State Police Sgt. Brian Polite said that Nguyen was partially ejected through the rearmost window on the driver's side of the bus. State troopers, with the help of an off-duty firefighter gently pulled Nguyen back through the window and transported him to Robert Wood Johnson hospital in New Brunswick, where he died of head injuries.

One passenger, Ashley Wilson, 21, of Queens, N.Y, told the Star-Ledger that police said the bus had had a flat tire, but that has yet to be confirmed. Wilson, a senior at Temple University, said she felt like the bus hit a ditch because it started rocking and felt as if the vehicle would turn over.

Investigators are not sure what caused the accident, but NBC News New York reported a preliminary examination by State Police which indicates that when the bus wound up on the median, it struck an overpass support beam that caused the rear of the bus to rise off the ground, hitting the underside of the overpass. The bus then slid across the roadway before crashing into an embankment on the right side of the highway. The bus has been towed to an impound lot where investigators from the State Police’s Commercial Carrier unit are set to inspect the electronic components of the vehicle in an effort to determine the exact cause of the crash, CBS News reported.

The medical examiner's office will perform an autopsy on Wang, 50, a Taiwanese national, to determine whether he suffered from a medical issue prior to the crash. Many of the injured passengers are recovering at the Robert Wood Johnson trauma unit.

Monday's crash comes days after another chartered bus crashed near the Hutchinson River Parkway exit off Interstate 95 in the Bronx Saturday morning. The World Wide Tours bus was returning from Mohegan Sun Casino in Connecticut, headed for Chinatown in Lower Manhattan when the crash occurred killing 15 people and injuring more than a dozen other passengers, the New York Post reported.

The bus reportedly hit a guardrail, tipped onto its side, then skidded 300 feet before slamming into a pole that nearly sliced the bus in half leaving a mess of mangled metal and several body parts strewn about, ABCNEWS reported. The driver now identified as Ophadell Williams, told police a tractor-trailer clipped the bus while changing lanes then fled the scene. However, investigators say what is left of the bus does not indicate that a collision occurred.

According to a report by the Journal News on USAToday.com, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo issued a statement ordering the New York State Inspector General to conduct an immediate investigation into how Williams was able to obtain and keep a commercial driver's license when he had a criminal record. The 40-year-old Brooklyn man served more than two years on a manslaughter charge for his role in a 1990 stabbing. Then, in 1998, Williams served almost three years in prison for grand larceny after he fleeced the Police Athletic League fund for $83,905. In both cases, Williams used aliases.

The NY Post reported that an eyewitness to Saturday's crash claimed William's bus was swerving and traveling at a high rate of speed just before the crash. Police say they administered a breathalyzer, which Williams passed and do not have any proof, at this time, that the bus was going in excess of the 55-MPH speed limit. Blood test results on Williams, who was briefly trapped under the bus, are pending.