SALINA, N.Y. - A double-decker bus bound from Philadelphia to Toronto slammed into a low railroad bridge in the predawn darkness today, killing four passengers including a Temple University student, according to authorities.
Kevin Coffey, 19, from Manhattan, Kan., was identified by dental records supplied by the family, according to Onondaga County (N.Y.) Sheriff Kevin Walsh.
Five passengers were seriously injured, including a Montgomery County woman, Walsh said.
The Megabus carried 28 people, including the driver, when it rammed the bridge around 2:30 a.m. on the Onondaga Lake Parkway in Salina, a suburb of Syracuse, officials said.
Thirteen were from Pennsylvania, Walsh said. He did not specify how many were from New Jersey.
At 8:30 tonight, the driver and four passengers remained hospitalized. Among them was a 55-year-old woman from King of Prussia, who was being treated for life-threatening injuries, Walsh said.
Also killed in the accident were Ashwani Mehta, 34, of India; Benjamin Okorie, 35, of Malaysia, and a New Jersey woman in her teens or early 20s whose name Walsh did not release.
The driver was identified as John Tomaszewski, 59, of Yardville, N.J.
The bus lay on its side after the crash. It was too tall to pass under the span, said Larry Ives, supervisor of dispatch operations for the Sheriff's Office.
It struck the bridge between two large signs warning that the clearance was 10 feet, 9 inches, photographs showed. The bus' top level was obliterated.
Passenger Lee Veeraraghavan, 27, a University of Pennsylvania doctoral student who was traveling home to Toronto, said she had heard moans and calls for help after the crash. She told the Post-Standard newpaper of Syracuse that she had been sitting in the back of the bus on the lower level.
"I just tried to get my bearings," Veeraraghavan said. "I just remember coming to in pain and a lot of broken glass under the bus, and there was a woman's legs on top of me."
After about 15 minutes someone on the bus pried open what she thought was a door, she said.
The driver had head injuries but was speaking to investigators, Sheriff's Deputy Herb Wiggins told the newspaper. Walsh said there was no indication that the driver had been drinking or using drugs.
The bus left Philadelphia at 10 p.m. Friday and was to stop in Syracuse and Buffalo, according to Don Carmichael, a senior vice president at Coach USA, which operates Megabus.
Normally, it enters Syracuse on I-81 and heads straight for a depot for a 30-minute rest stop, Carmichael said, but on this night, the driver was on a lakeside parkway that may have been unfamiliar.
Asked if the driver might have been lost, Carmichael said, "He had driven the route before."
The parkway and the transportation depot share the same interstate exit, and a driver who chose the wrong fork at the bottom of the ramp would find himself on the parkway. From there, it is only a short distance to the bridge, and in between there are no places to turn or pull off the road.
Megabus has operated the double-decker buses since 2007.
"This is a very, very unfortunate, horrific accident, and our primary concern right now is for the families and loved ones of the deceased. Our thoughts and prayers are with them," Carmichael said.