Santa Rosa Police say in Guadalupe County, a 22-year-old Clovis woman died in a fatal car accident.

Police say she was driving on US 60 and lost control of her car; they say it rolled over four times.
No other cars were involved.
Police say with her in the car were her 18-month year-old and two-year-old daughters.
The 18-month-year-old suffered serious injuries and the 2 year-old was airlifted to Amarillo.
Police are still investigating the accident.

The Beverly Hills Police Department is asking for help to identify a young man killed in an auto accident.

The accident occurred around 10:20 Saturday morning near the intersection of Valley Mills and Industrial Drive.

A driver says he was eastbound on South Valley Mills Drive, when a man jumped out in front of his vehicle.

Police say the victim is a black male between 20 and 25 years old, who weighed about 240 pounds and was 6′3” to 6′5”.

The young man was wearing a blue “Teen Challenge” t-shirt and jeans, black Adidas shoes and carrying a Dora The Explorer blanket.

If you have any information about this man, call Beverly Hill police at (254) 752-2585.

Two men riding tractor trying to go uphill in Campbell County are involved in a rollover accident that kills one.

One man is dead, another injured after a tractor accident in Campbell County. The two men were riding a tractor on Boone Smith Road, apparently trying to climb a hillside, when the driver lost control and the tractor rolled over. The driver was killed on impact, the passenger jumped as it rolled sustaining minor injuries. He was taken to St. Luke Hospital. Police have not yet released the identity of the victim.

A family friend found the body Monday of a 70-year-old man who died when he was pinned beneath his overturned track loader, the DeWitt County Sheriff’s Office said.

Tom Kortz, 70, had just finished mowing a neighbor’s yard before he came home and got on the vehicle Sunday, his brother, Jerry Kortz, said in a story in Monday’s online edition of the Victoria Advocate.

DeWitt County Sheriff Jode Zavesky said the man’s track loader apparently got too close to the edge of an embankment before it rolled down the slope and pinned him. A local justice of the peace pronounced him dead at the scene at 7:40 a.m.

The accident took place about 120 miles west-southwest of Houston.

Five local family members were tragically killed after an 18-wheeler on I-37 slammed into a Mazda and engulfed the car into flames 3 p.m. Thursday.

Officials identified the victims of the car crash as Robert Perez, Sr., 60, Robert Perez, Jr., 38, Cynthia Perez, 32, David Perez, 23, and Cynthia’s daughter, Brittany Perez, 12. Cynthia was the driver of the car.

The family was on their way to visit family members in Abilene, Texas.

Department of Public Safety Officers said the Mazda was travelling northbound in the inner lane when the car’s tire blew out. Then, the car swerved through a grassy median and crossed into southbound traffic striking a 18 wheeler truck.

Police said the car hit the semi in the side fuel saddle, which started the fire that covered the car, the Perez family and the semi’s cab.

Troopers also said it was amazing the driver of the semi was able to walk away from the accident unharmed, and that his cargo full of 5,000 gallons of fuel oil, on the opposite side of the highway, did not explode.

The accident brought traffic to a halt for people that were heading in and out of the Corpus Christi area.

Police reopened the highway around 8 p.m. after it was shut down for over four hours. Police hope to reconstruct the accident and get some answers in the next few weeks.

Even though he was 1,000 miles away in Ohio, John Betts instantly felt nauseated when he learned about Friday morning’s deadly bus crash in Sherman, which claimed the lives of 17 Vietnamese Catholics on their way to a religious festival.

His 20-year-old son, David, was crushed to death in March 2007 in another rollover accident in Atlanta during a bus trip with his college baseball team.

That bus, like the one in the Sherman accident, was not equipped with safety belts, except for the driver’s seat. Most of those who died were ejected from their seats. Some were crushed.

Now a safety activist, Mr. Betts obsesses about when federal regulators will end 40 years of inattention and order seat restraints that he believes would have prevented David’s death and almost all deaths in commercial bus accidents.

“The pain does not need to continue,” he said Saturday. “There is no need for people to keep dying in these motor coach rollovers.”

Historically, the 30 to 50 people killed each year in bus accidents have paled in comparison to the 40,000 to 50,000 deaths recorded in automobile collisions.

Rollover accidents

But when multiple deaths have occurred on buses, it has usually been a rollover accident where passengers were ejected from their seats. Sherman police said many of the approximately 40 casualties in Friday’s accident appeared to have “crushing wounds” sustained when the bus blew a tire, slid off U.S. Highway 75 and dropped down an embankment.

Survivors reported that some people were tossed around inside the bus. Some passengers landed on top of each other inside the bus while others were ejected through the windows and crushed when the bus fell on them.

Jason Noel, who visited the family of a fellow church member at Wilson N. Jones Medical Center in Sherman on Saturday, said the lack of seat belts was worrisome.

“Absolutely, that could have saved a lot of lives,” he said.

Mr. Noel is far from alone in his opinion. Among those who concur is Jim Hall, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board from 1994 until 2001.

Now a safety consultant in Washington, Mr. Hall said Saturday that the lack of seat restraints on passenger buses is “the biggest gaping hole in transportation safety today.”

While other countries have had seat belts in buses for at least a decade, the non-responsiveness from the U.S. Department of Transportation, Mr. Hall said, “is past being a disappointment. It’s to the point of almost being criminal.”

Years of pleading

The safety board has urged the U.S. Department of Transportation since 1968 to require bus manufacturers to install safety belts to keep passengers in their seats. Board members renewed that call as recently as last month, when they used their findings in the Atlanta bus crash to issue a sharp denunciation of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s inaction on seat belts.

Board member Debbie Hersman told reporters Saturday at the site of the Sherman bus crash that it was too early to tell if restraints would have mattered.

NHTSA officials have said there is not sufficient evidence to prove safety belts are needed in passenger buses. The agency also has resisted doing research.

“Given the overall safety record of motor coaches and school buses, I think the approach has generally worked,” agency spokesman Rae Tyson said in a previous Dallas Morning News interview about seat belts.

NHTSA officials could not be reached for comment Saturday.

There have been recent signs that NHTSA’s icy view of seat restraints on buses may be melting. Earlier this year, the agency conducted crash tests in Mr. Betts’ home state of Ohio. The results of those tests have not been released.

Last year, Transportation Secretary Mary Peters endorsed the idea of installing seat belts in school buses, although rules to implement that change have stalled.

Commercial bus safety

There is also a movement in Congress to enact legislation that would force the government to improve commercial bus safety. The legislation is co-sponsored by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, and Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio.

Their bill, which is scheduled for a hearing before the Senate Transportation Committee on Sept. 18, grew out of the Atlanta crash that killed Mr. Betts’ son and six others, and a bus fire near Dallas that killed 23 Hurricane Rita evacuees in 2005.

In addition to ordering seat belts and stronger seating systems, the legislation would require glazing on windows to prevent passengers from being ejected.

The motor coach industry, which includes more than 3,700 operators around the country, has not publicly opposed the bill. But representatives have said they want any legislation to be rooted in scientific fact.

Mr. Hall attributed the government’s historical inaction on seat belts to successful lobbying by the bus industry, which he accused of putting profits ahead of safety.

The cost of installing seat belts has been estimated by some experts as less than 1 percent of the total cost of manufacturing a bus. Motor coaches, which typically carry about 60 passengers, cost around $500,000 to make.

Houston attorney Tom Brown, who represented several clients in a charter bus crash near Waco in 2003, said he believed manufacturers don’t see a need to change.

Mr. Brown was the lead plaintiff’s attorney in a lawsuit against Motor Coach Industries, the maker of the bus that crossed the median on Interstate 35, collided with two cars and fell over on its side during a church trip to Dallas.

No precedent

The $17.5 million verdict, which is pending before a state appeals court, reflected an unprecedented decision by a jury to hold a bus manufacturer liable for not installing seat belts and glazed windows even though the government did not require them.

MCI also manufactured the coaches involved in Friday’s crash in Sherman and the 2005 bus fire near Dallas.

Mr. Brown said he continues to be baffled by the bus industry’s reluctance to make what he believes is an easy fix. He said he is convinced that change will not come unless the Congress or regulators force it upon the manufacturers.

Calls to the headquarters of two industry groups, the United Motor Coach Association and American Bus Association, were not returned on Saturday.

Mr. Hall said he remains haunted by his inability to persuade federal regulators to require buses to have seat belts.

“Hopefully,” he said, “this tragedy will be the tipping point for the federal government to take action.”

It’s the same hope he said he’s had after every bus crash.

Source: dallasnews.com

Witnesses who called 911 after a deadly charter bus crash in Texas that killed at least 17 people described a chaotic scene, telling emergency personnel of bloody passengers crushed beneath the smoking wreck of the bus, according to calls released Saturday by police.

The unlicensed bus carrying 55 members of a Vietnamese Catholic group from Houston to Carthage, Mo., for an annual religious festival smashed into a guardrail and skidded off a highway early Friday morning near the Texas-Oklahoma border. Twelve people died at the scene and five more have died at area hospitals.

One emergency call begins with a female crash victim speaking in accented English over the screams and moans of other passengers. After struggling to answer the 911 operator’s questions, she hands the phone to a man, who apparently arrived at the scene immediately after the crash.

“We’ve got people crushed underneath the bus,” the man said. “The bus is smoking. It might catch fire.”

A female caller told a 911 operator that there were passengers “just everywhere out here laid out on the ground. They are bloody.” Another caller said, “There’s people screaming for help.”

Most of the passengers were from the Vietnamese Martyrs Church and two other mostly Vietnamese congregations in Houston, heading to an annual festival honoring the Virgin Mary. The Marian Days pilgrimage, which started in the late 1970s, attracts thousands of Catholics of Vietnamese descent and includes a large outdoor Mass each day, entertainment and camping at night.

By late morning Saturday, traffic was back to normal and a damaged guardrail had been replaced. Several bouquets of carnations, tulips and roses were left down the embankment amid shards of glass and burn scars in the grass. The crash occurred near an overpass that crosses a small creek.

Authorities said the vehicle’s right front tire, which blew out, had been retreaded in violation of safety standards, said Debbie Hersman, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board. The tread separated from the tire in a process called delamination. It is legal to retread such tires but they may not be used on the wheels that steer the bus, she said.

After the tire blew out, the bus skidded about 130 feet before striking a guardrail, Hersman said. It then traveled nearly 120 feet before coming to rest down an embankment.

Authorities said Saturday they believe the 2002 model bus, a 45-foot long motor coach, was equipped with a device that can record information, similar to a black box on an airplane. If that device is found, it could help investigators learn how fast the bus was going and whether the driver hit the brakes or the accelerator at the time of the crash, Hersman said.

The driver, 52-year-old Barrett Wayne Broussard, had a commercial license but his medical certification expired in May, according to the NTSB. Broussard was reported in stable condition at a hospital. Authorities took blood samples from Broussard on Friday but do not have the results, Hersman said.

Broussard was convicted in 2001 of driving while intoxicated in Houston and sentenced to 10 days in prison and a $225 fine, according to online records from the Texas Department of Public Safety. He has also been arrested at least three other times and was sentenced to two years in prison in 1998 for violating probation.

The bus operator, Iguala BusMex Inc. of Houston, had applied in June for a federal license to operate as a charter but was still awaiting approval, according to online records. The company recently filed incorporation papers, listing the same owner and address as Angel Tours Inc., which was forced by federal regulators to take its vehicles out of interstate service June 23 after an unsatisfactory review.

The review cited the company for problems in three areas: using a driver before receiving a pre-employment result, failing to require a driver to prepare a vehicle inspection report and using a driver who wasn’t medically re-examined every two years.

A May 1 review by the Federal Motor Carriers Safety Administration cited the company for a number of violations, including a lax drug and alcohol testing program, Hersman said. Two of five drivers did not have current medical certificates and 27 of 28 vehicle inspections were missing, she said.

Neither entity is authorized to operate as a carrier in interstate commerce, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

The bus was registered under temporary tags that expire Saturday, Hersman said. The NTSB is looking into the history of the sale of the charter bus, which was sold by a bus company in New York.

A man at Angel Tours in Houston declined to comment Friday. The company’s voicemail system was full Saturday and not accepting new messages. No one answered Saturday at a listing for the company’s attorney.

“We’re in the middle of a very intense investigation,” attorney Keena Greyling told the Houston Chronicle in a story on its Web site Saturday. “Because of that, we really can’t discuss anything further.”

On Saturday, parishoners gathered at St. Patrick church in nearby Denison to remember the victims. Deacon Gary Vogel offered words of comfort to the crowd and reminded attendees to continue their prayers.

Tragedies can cause fear and doubt, Vogel said.

The service was one of several ways people have shown their support since the tragedy. Earlier, people laid bouquets of flowers at the site of the crash. Local churches opened their doors for the American Red Cross to set up respite centers while people from the surrounding area donated blood, offered to cook food or simply to be there for support, Vogel said.

Sharon Watson, executive director of the American Red Cross for the Texoma area, said the agency is providing lodging, transportation, counseling and food to the immediate family members of the victims, she said. They will assist with funeral expenses, too.

Grayson County officials and Sherman police on Saturday released the names and ages of the 11 women and six men who died in the crash. The youngest was Thuy Thu Vu, 27, and the oldest was 89-year-old Cham T. Nguyen, who died at Harris Methodist Hospital in Fort Worth.

Vu Pham, 35, of Houston, said his brother, sister-in-law, mother and 12-year-old nephew all were on the bus. His brother, whose left leg has been paralyzed from polio since he was a boy, remained in intensive care Saturday in a Sherman hospital, he said.

“We thought it would be better for him to get on the bus because it’s a far drive,” Pham said. “Now he keeps saying that he should have driven himself.”

Pham said his family feels lucky. None of his relatives are in critical condition, he said, “but we feel it could get worse.”

“It’s still a lot,” he said. “You just take it one day at a time.”

Like passengers around her, Leha Nguyen, 45, had started to doze off when she heard the bus make a horrible noise, followed by screaming. She opened her eyes to see people strewn about, one of them underneath a fallen television.

“I think I’m the luckiest one out of most people,” she said.

The crash in Sherman is among the nation’s deadliest. In 2005, 23 people were killed near Dallas when a bus carrying nursing home residents away from Hurricane Rita caught fire in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

Organizers of the festival in Missouri said the victims would be remembered at Mass and at various conferences during the gathering.

Source: chron.com

The death toll has reached 17 in the crash of a private charter bus on its way from Houston to Missouri along northbound U.S. Highway 75, officials said Saturday.

Cham T. Nguyen, 89, died at Harris Methodist Fort Worth at 3:55 p.m. Saturday, according to the Tarrant County medical examiner’s office.

More than three dozen others were injured in the crash early Friday morning. On Saturday, many of those remained in hospitals stretching from Dallas to Oklahoma.

Meanwhile, Lt. Bob Fair of the Sherman Police Department confirmed Saturday that the driver of the bus was 52-year-old Barrett Wayne Broussard of Houston.

Harris County court records show Mr. Broussard was convicted in 2001 of driving while intoxicated. He also has convictions for misdemeanor assault, criminal trespass and unlawful use of human services funds, a felony.

The bus was transporting Vietnamese Catholic church members from Houston to a religious gathering in Missouri, authorities said.

The vehicle was part of a caravan of three buses with passengers from two Houston parishes – Vietnamese Martyrs and Our Lady of Lavang, said a Martyrs official. The bus was on its way to Carthage, Mo., for the Marian Days festival, an annual celebration in honor of the Virgin Mary.

The accident was the worst bus wreck in Texas since 23 people died in 2005 when a bus carrying nursing home residents fleeing from Hurricane Rita was rocked by several explosions after catching fire on a gridlocked highway near Dallas.

The wreck happened less than a mile from the spot where a trucker crossed the median and killed 10 people five years ago.

Police were called about 12:45 a.m. after the bus carrying 55 people apparently lost control and rolled on its side near Post Oak Creek, just beyond West Park Avenue, Sherman police Lt. Bob Fair said.

The first officers to respond described a horrific scene, with luggage, handbags and pieces of the bus strewn amid a pile of bodies, some dead, some severely injured. There were cries for help and looks of shock, officers said.

“There were people deceased from the front of the bus to the back of the bus,” said Officer Zachary Flores, one of the first on the scene.

Twelve adults died at the scene and three died at area hospitals, authorities said. The survivors ranged in age from elderly to children, police said. All passengers who survived were transported to area hospitals, many with “crushing” injuries, said Sherman police Lt. Steve Ayers

“You’ve got 50-something people laying everywhere,” said Officer Tony Walden, also among the first on scene. “I don’t even know how to describe it.”

Police and paramedics from McKinney to Oklahoma were called in. At least 18 helicopters were needed to transport the injured. Rescuers entered the bus through the front and through a hole in the bottom, police said.

A language barrier further complicated the operation, police said.

“What do you say when you see bodies all over the place and screaming for help and they’re talking a language you don’t understand?” Lt. Fair said. “That’s pretty much the definition of chaotic.”

Grayson County Justice of the Peace Greg Middents said 12 body bags lined the embankment when he arrived at the scene about 3:30 a.m.

He unzipped them one-by-one, looking for identification, and issued the formal pronouncement of death.

“It was a horrible scene and a tragic event,” he said. “We found six names and the others and still Jane and John Doe.”

Judge Middents said the right front tire on the tour bus blew out as it crossed a bridge near downtown Sherman.

“It veered into the guardrail, and started swerving back-and-forth,” he said. “It rode the guardrail for awhile. Then it flipped on its side and eventually went over and down a grass embankment next to a creek.”

He said ministers from a church in Dallas were called in to help translate and comfort those wounded.

Sherman police were leading the investigation and preliminary indications were that the bus may have blown a tire, causing it to lose control, Lt. Fair said. He said there was no indication any other vehicles were involved in the wreck along a stretch of highway where the nighttime speed limit is 65 mph.

The bus belonged to Angel Tours, police said. The bus driver was in stable condition and had been questioned by authorities. Police did not say at a morning news conference what information the driver provided.

The National Transportation Safety Board was sending a team to the accident site to perform an on-scene investigation, said Terry Williams, board spokesman.

As accident investigators examined the wreckage, area funeral homes carted off the bodies, which had been wrapped in white tarp and laid in a row along a small hill not far from the white bus. By 5:30 a.m., all of the dead had been removed from the scene.

The survivors were shuttled to hospitals throughout North Texas.

The National Transportation Safety Board will hold a news conference at 2 p.m. today in Sherman to discuss its investigation into the bus crash.

Source: dallasnews.com

Since arriving here on an Angel Tours bus on Friday, Vinh Nguyen and 54 others have shared a unique bond of shock, grief and luck.

Two buses, loaded with 55 passengers each, left Our Lady of Lavang Church in northwest Houston on Thursday evening. One bus arrived to the annual religious festival, Marian Days, which draws 50,000 Vietnamese-American Catholics to this small Ozarks town.

The other bus did not. It crashed early Friday morning in Sherman, killing at least 17 people and injuring dozens. Nguyen and the others haven’t stopped talking about it since seeing the crash.

“We both left the church at the same time, but we got split up because our bus had to make more stops,” said Nguyen, 62, who lives in north Houston. “We know that the other people — the victims — were on their way to do the very same pilgrimage and they were in very high spirits.”
‘More blessed than us’
The fatal bus crash in North Texas continues to shake this tiny town of Carthage, two hours north of Kansas City. A large video monitor erected on the parish grounds Saturday at the Congregation of the Mother Co-Redemptrix, the host of the annual festival that honors the Virgin Mary, continuously displayed photos of the bus wreckage, drawing gasps from people who crowded around.

“We know the victims are here looking down on us they are more blessed than us,” said Nguyen, who said he paid around $125 for the Angel Tours round-trip ride.

As of Saturday evening, Nguyen and others were attempting to contact someone from Angel Tours about their return trip. The bus driver who dropped them off — Jose — told Nguyen that another bus company will pick them up at 6 a.m. today.

Despite the tragic news in Texas, the procession of Masses and religious concerts continued Saturday in Carthage.

Ky Nguyen, another member of Our Lady of Lavang, said he knew three people who died in the crash: Hanh Viet Nguyen, 60, Hue Thi Phan, 59, and Thuy Thu Pham Vu, 27.

“Their bodies were covered with blankets,” said Ky Nguyen, who got off his bus to see what had happened to the riders on the bus that crashed. “We were all crying and trying to help comfort the victims.”

They stayed at the crash for about two hours before deciding to continue on, Vinh Nguyen said.

“There was nothing else we could do but continue on with the pilgrimage,” he said.

Source chron.com

As federal authorities moved to shut down the companies linked to a bus crash that killed 17 people, people returning from a pilgrimage to Carthage, Mo., stopped at the accident site Sunday, erecting a makeshift memorial and saying prayers.

“I felt like I should treasure everything that I have because you never know,” said Kim Truong, one of those who got off one of the two tour buses that stopped at the site. Truong said “thousands and thousands” of people in Missouri prayed for the victims — who had been on their way to an annual religious festival in Carthage when their bus crashed early Friday

“I think that God used this tragedy to strengthen our faith. I truly believe that,” said Hoang Vu, of Frisco. He stopped at the crash site with his wife and son to offer prayers with other mourners.

Meanwhile, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration ordered Iguala BusMex and Angel Tours Inc. to cease commercial operations, finding that the companies posed an “imminent hazard.”

Inspectors found a second bus operating in Carthage and took it out of service because it did not have the authority to operate, said National Transportation Safety Board spokeswoman Debbie Hersman. It was registered to Iguala BusMex.

A second order from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration finds that the activities of Angel De La Torre, owner and president of the bus companies, “in connection with motor carrier operations pose an ‘imminent hazard’ to the public.”

Angel Tours’ voicemail system was full Sunday and not accepting new messages.

The bus in the Texas crash smashed into a guardrail and skidded off a highway early Friday at Sherman near the Oklahoma border, killing 12 people at the scene and five others who died later at hospitals.

Most of the passengers were from three Vietnamese Catholic congregations in Houston.

Authorities released the driving record for the bus driver, 52-year-old Barrett Wayne Broussard. Since 2001, he has been cited by police three times — once for driving while intoxicated and twice for speeding.

His license was suspended for two months in 2001 because of the DWI conviction in Harris County, Hersman said. His speeding violations came in March 2007 and May 2004.

Broussard has also failed roadside inspections twice in the last year, both times resulting in his vehicle being taken out of service for driver logbook violations, Hersman said.

The first failed inspection came on May 2, 2007, when Broussard was driving for All State Coaches. His vehicle was taken out of service for logbook violations and inspectors also found that he did not have a valid or current medical certificate.

The second failed inspection came on Aug. 6, 2007, when Broussard was driving for Angel Tours Inc. His vehicle was taken out of service, this time for an hours of service violation, Hersman said.

“We will be checking to see if this driver was working part-time for someone else,” Hersman said. “As you know one of his speeding tickets was for when he was working for another company.”

Hersman said inspectors found Broussard had been on duty 33.25 hours with two days off in the seven days preceding the accident and had driven a total of 25 hours (out of that 33.25), according to his logbook. Bus drivers can drive 10 hours out of 15 on duty, the NTSB said.

Broussard pulled out of Houston about 8:30 p.m. on Thursday and had been driving about 4.75 hours before the accident, the logbook showed.

Robert Accetta, the NTSB member leading the investigation, said officials were still in a fact-finding phase. An investigator will travel to Houston with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to find information about the two bus companies.

Iguala BusMex applied in June for a federal license to operate as a charter but was still awaiting approval, according to online records. Angel Tours was forced by federal regulators to take its vehicles out of interstate service June 23 after an unsatisfactory review.

Inspectors were also looking at the mechanics of the wrecked bus and examining its interior damage, Accetta said. The damage could provide a clue to victims’ injuries.

Lt. Bob Fair of the Sherman Police Department said his department is finishing inspections of the bus. He declined to comment on whether any criminal charges would be filed.

Authorities said the vehicle’s right front tire, which blew out, had been retreaded in violation of safety standards. The bus skidded about 130 feet before striking a guardrail. It then traveled nearly 120 feet before coming to rest down an embankment near a creek.

The bus was a shell of itself as it sat in the city impound lot. All of the emergency windows on the right side of the bus were broken. Overhead bins above passengers on the right side of the bus appeared to be collapsed. Some of the seats — all of which were still anchored to the floor, Hersman said — leaned forward toward the bare windows. The front right corner of the bus was smashed. All the wheels had been removed.

Investigators took measurements and inspected debris at the accident site Sunday. Dave Rayburn, an NTSB senior investigator, measured the guardrail and the spot where the charter’s front right tire blew out. Orange spray paint marked parts of the far right lane of the highway.

A woman’s dress shoe and a white tennis shoe lay in the grass beside the railing. Damaged piece of guardrail were scattered about in a nearby creek and on the road’s embankment amid charred grass and broken glass. Several bouquets of flowers were also there.

Peter Tran, a close friend of Thuong Tath, who suffered a cracked neck bone and lost his wife during the accident, said he was saddened to find remnants of the group’s crash. He said he saw packets of longan, a traditional Vietnamese fruit, and yellow sweet rice. He said he also found a jug of thit kho, or roasted pork, and moved it to a place he hoped emergency crews would not find.

“It’s been really, really sad,” Tran said. “It’s a terrible time. I cried, but everyone cries.”

The pastor of a Vietnamese church in Houston that lost parishioners in the crash told churchgoers Sunday that they must accept the tragedy as a “door that God has opened.”

“Do not fight the will of God,” the Rev. Vu Thanh said. “(People must) live in faith of God.”

At the Vietnamese Martyr Church, portraits of five victims who were regular attendees were surrounded by flowers at the foot of the pulpit. Candles flickered before them during Sunday services.

The crash in Sherman is among the nation’s deadliest. In 2005, 23 people were killed near Dallas when a bus carrying nursing home residents away from Hurricane Rita caught fire.