2 Killed as Runaway Truck Hits Las Vegas-Bound Bus

A runaway truck slammed into the back of a Las Vegas-bound bus filled with Trans World Airlines employees from Southern California, causing a crash that killed two passengers and injured 31 others, the California Highway Patrol office in Barstow reported Saturday.

The bus skidded off Interstate 15 late Friday near the small state line community of Nipton, Calif., bounced over a ditch and slammed into an embankment. The impact flung two passengers--both of whom reportedly were helping the driver in his futile attempts to wrestle the bus back under control--through the windshield onto the desert floor, killing them.

The dead, both employees of the TWA maintenance facility at Los Angeles International Airport, were identified as Pedro Benitez of Westminster and Frank Boris of Carson, the organizer of the trip.

The heavily laden truck--its brakes apparently inoperative-- hurtled on along the highway, careening downgrade for almost 10 miles before crossing the border and rolling to a stop near a bar in Stateline, Nev., the CHP said.

Investigators said the truck driver, Gene Marks of Richmond, Utah, telephoned police from Whiskey Pete’s Saloon to report the accident. Within minutes, ambulances and a rescue helicopter were speeding to the crash site from Las Vegas, about 50 miles to the northeast. Additional ambulances were dispatched from Baker, about 40 miles to the southwest.

Nine of the more seriously injured were taken to Valley Hospital in Las Vegas, where two of them were admitted. They were Mary Vaughan, 48, who was in serious condition with multiple broken bones, and Ellen Foreman, 64, who was in fair condition with spinal injuries.

Sixteen other victims were taken to Southern Nevada Memorial Hospital in Las Vegas, where two were admitted for further observation. Six others were treated at Desert Springs Hospital and Sunrise Hospital, both also in Las Vegas. Two were admitted in stable condition and the others were released.

Roger Cohen, a TWA representative in Los Angeles, said the approximately 40 passengers aboard the bus were TWA personnel--”primarily maintenance, ramp service, commissary people at the airport”--along with a few family members and friends.

Passengers said that the trip was arranged informally by one of the two men killed and was not an official TWA function.

The America First Tours bus, which had left the Los Angeles area several hours earlier, was headed east on I-15 at about 11 p.m. Friday when the truck--carrying a load that gave it a total weight of close to 78,000 pounds, apparently within legal limits--struck the coach.

CHP Sgt. Mike Norman said he talked later with the bus driver, Cecil Ray, “and all he knows is that he got hit from the rear and it knocked him out of control.”

Nate Diangeles, 53, said he was riding with his wife, Pam, four rows behind the driver when the bus began to skid.

“Two of the boys in front tried to help the driver with the wheel, they tried to help him straighten her out,” Diangeles said. “When the bus crashed, they went through the windshield. . . .

“We were all screaming and everything else,” Diangeles said. “People were crawling out the windows and through the windshield. . . . Everyone was helping each other to get out.”

A few minutes later, Diangeles said, he walked back along the route the bus had taken when it left the highway, and found the bodies. Diangeles and his wife were among those treated later for injuries.

Baker ambulance attendant Annie Price, who arrived about half an hour after the accident, said she thought the surviving passengers were “extremely lucky” that the bus did not overturn when it left the highway. “It could have been a whole lot worse than it was,” she said.

Initial reports indicated that the truck’s brakes had failed on the long downgrade that extends east from the 4,700-foot summit of the I-15 pass through the Ivanpah Mountains.