Driver Joseph Barthelus, 70, and passenger Jesy Garcia dead, 6 people critical after New Jersey Transit bus broadsides another in Newark

The person killed in the crash was the driver of the New Jersey Transit bus that slammed into the side of another NJ Transit bus that was carrying approximately 20 passengers around 6 a.m.

The exact number of injured is not known, but Mayor Ras Baraka said seven other people were critically injured.

Video from news helicopters showed the two tangled buses came to rest on a median. The bus that was struck was on its side, its frame bent and the other bus lodged in its undercarriage. Firefighters could be seen pulling passengers through a side window and loading them onto waiting stretchers and into ambulances.

A woman, who was a passenger in that bus and who was among seven people critically injured, died later Friday, said Katherine Carter, a spokeswoman for the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office.

The driver of the number 59 bus from Dunellen to Newark broadsided the number 13 bus from Irvington to Clifton while heading west on Raymond Boulevard shortly after 6 a.m. The driver of the 59 bus, who was the only person on board, died.

Joseph Barthelus, 70, of Union, a veteran bus operator who had been an NJ Transit driver for 27 years, was killed in the crash, NJ Transit Interim Executive Director Dennis Martin said at a press conference Friday afternoon at Newark City Hall.  

Her mother, Jesy Garcia, had just moved out of the house in Elizabeth, where she lived with her daughter, son-in-law William Mendez and the couple's two children. She was forced to moved in with her family earlier this year after her apartment burned down. Her previous second-floor apartment was a few blocks from her job, allowing her to walk to work each day.