Callers reported a swerving pickup before deadly bus crash
NEW BRAUNFELS, Texas (AP) — Authorities in two Texas counties said they received phone calls about a pickup driving erratically shortly before a head-on collision between a truck and church bus in southwest Texas that killed 13 people returning from a retreat.
A traffic accident reconstruction specialist meanwhile suggested to The San Antonio Express-News that any seatbelts fitted in the minibus might not have been suitable for protecting older, more vulnerable passengers, even if it was traveling at a moderate speed.
The Texas Department of Public Safety refused to speculate on the cause of the collision near the town of Concan, about 80 miles west of San Antonio, although one spokesman said the truck driver appeared to have crossed the center line.
Investigators have not released information on the speeds of either vehicle, but the fronts of the church bus and the pickup were heavily damaged in the wreck, and the bus was backed up onto a guardrail, surrounded by shattered glass.
In 2015, eight inmates and two corrections officers were killed when their prison bus skidded off a highway near Odessa, traveled down an embankment and was struck by a passing freight train.
Seventeen people died in 2008 when a charter bus crashed in North Texas near the Oklahoma border, and 23 nursing home residents being evacuated from the Houston area as Hurricane Rita approached in 2005 were killed when their charter bus caught fire near Dallas.