I-95 bus crash leaves 1 dead, 16 injured in Virginia

A shuttle bus struck a guardrail and overturned before dawn Sunday along busy Interstate 95 south of the nation's capital, leaving one person dead and sending 16 others to the hospital, Virginia State Police said.

The bus was headed south on the heavily traveled East Coast artery when witnesses reported a white, speeding four-door passenger vehicle swerved into the bus's travel lane. The bus then swerved to the right to avoid the sedan, ran off the road, struck the guardrail and overturned, Virginia State Police said.

The crash occurred on the interstate in northern Virginia's Fairfax County and police were called at 3:28 a.m. Sunday, State Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller said.

Geller said the person killed in the crash was a man and was one of two people flown from the crash to a northern Virginia hospital, but she did not have any additional details. She said she did not know if the man who died was one of the sixteen passengers on the bus or the driver.

Geller said police were searching for the white sedan witnesses saw and added that southbound lanes of the interstate were restricted for a time before fully reopening around 5 a.m. Sunday.

Geller identified the crashed vehicle as an American Transportation bus. An answering service dispatcher for that company said American Transportation had no information to release. A person who replied to an e-mail sent to the company's address referred questions to the Virginia State Police.

News photographs taken at the site showed police had erected orange safety cones at the site and used floodlights to illuminate the overturned commuter bus. The white bus was on its right side in a grassy area, its rear pointed away from a crumpled guardrail. Crews were visible using a tall crane trying to right the bus. Its windshield was shattered and much of its right side crumpled from the right front bumper backward.