Nine people killed, 44 injured in charter bus crash on Highway 83 in Webb County, Texas

Eight people were killed and at least 29 others were injured after a charter bus rolled over on a south Texas highway Saturday, the state Department of Public Safety said.

The crash on northbound 83 in Webb County near the border with Mexico occurred at around 11:26 a.m. local time (12:26 p.m. ET), DPS Trooper Conrad Hein said.

The bus company is based in San Juan in Hidalgo County. There was no answer at the bus company and no one immediately responded to a message left there.

The Texas Department of Transportation said wreckage from the crash forced the closure of the highway about 5 miles south of the Webb-Dimmit County line outside of Laredo.

The fire department described it as a rollover involving just one vehicle. 

Federal authorities will on Sunday begin to investigate a charter bus crash in far South Texas that killed eight people and injured 44 more in a single-vehicle rollover, officials said.

La Joya Independent School District spokesman Eden Ramirez said several school district employees were traveling on the OGA Charter bus that was headed to Kickapoo Lucky Eagle Casino in Eagle Pass. The bus company operates out of a home in San Juan.

Eight people died and 44 others were injured after a charter bus rolled over on a south Texas highway Saturday, the state Department of Public Safety said. The crash on northbound Highway 83 in Webb County near the border with Mexico occurred at around 11:26 a.m. local time (12:26 p.m. ET), DPS Trooper Conrad Hein said.

Eight of the victims were women and one was a man, Tijerina said. Most of those killed were in their 50s or 60s, but the oldest was 83, and all were Latino Americans, he said.

Webb County would also like to retract the statement concerning a ninth deceased victim. At this time, there have been only eight (8) confirmed deaths in Webb County due this incident.

The small South Texas bus company involved in a rollover crash that killed eight people and injured 44 others had twice been ordered by Louisiana state inspectors in 2015 to take one of its buses off the road to fix brake and emergency exit problems.

Webb County Judge Tano Tijerina and county Medical Examiner Dr. Corinne Stern held a news conference Sunday afternoon about the bus crash.

Several district employees planned a trip out of town, over the weekend to a casino. Their charter bus crashed, killing eight people from the Rio Grande Valley.

Texas Department of Public Safety Sgt. Johnny Hernandez said the remaining rows of seats had no lap belts. He said the bus was a 1998 model.

Guadalupe Carrillo and Elizabeth Carrillo were seriously injured in the incident, and blame OGA Charters LLC, of San Juan, for failing to adequately maintain or repair the bus, failing to fix known brake and emergency exit problems on the bus, failing to adequately train the driver of the bus, and failing to use a high degree of care which, as a common carrier, is it’s duty to its passengers, reads the lawsuit filed in the Hidalgo County District Court.

“The city is saddened by the news that we had also lost one of our own,” Lopez said. “That is something that we are trying to cope with, and we are trying to work with the families.”

The bus was not required to ABS because it was made before regulations required the system, and no conclusions have been made as to the cause of the crash at around 11 a.m. CDT in Webb County, NTSB lead investigator Peter Kotowsky told reporters Tuesday.

Atanacio Almendares Trejo, 83, died as a result of his injuries from the crash, according to a news release from The Texas Department of Safety.

The original lawsuit included only two survivors and named OGA Charters of San Juan as the sole defendant. An amended petition filed Saturday adds three plaintiffs and includes Kickapoo Lucky Eagle Casino; Porfirio Aguirre, the bus driver; and Elvia Estrada, a contracted bus coordinator for the casino.