A New York City tour bus crashed with a city transit bus Monday morning, killing three people and leaving 19 others injured while halting traffic in the heavily-traveled Queens intersection.
Surveillance video recorded the moment when a Dahlia charter bus slammed into Metropolitan Transit Authority bus about 6:15 a.m., ABC News reported. The MTA bus turned a corner when the two collided, sending the Dahlia charter onto a sidewalk and into a restaurant.
Raymond Mong, 49, the driver of the tour bus was killed, along with passenger Gregory Liljefors, 55, and a pedestrian, Henry Wdowiak, 68, ABC News said, and the driver of the MTA bus, who was not identified, was hospitalized in "noncritical" condition.
"We've had a really tragic morning here in Flushing, Queens," New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said at news conference, per National Public Radio. "Hard to compare to anything I've ever seen, the sheer destruction from the impact of this collision."
De Blasio said it was too early to know what happened and who was at fault. MTA chairman Joe Lhota said, though, that he was "very concerned about the speed," possibly being a factor based on how the buses spun around during the accident, NPR said.
The New York Daily News reported the MTA bus was pushed sideways almost 180-degrees by the impact, while the tour bus continued to travel forward before slamming into a Kennedy Fried Chicken outlet, starting a small fire.
The Daily News said, based on the surveillance video, it appeared the Dahlia bus was speeding.
ABC News, citing sources, said Mong was a former MTA driver who was in the process of being fired by the authority in 2015 after learning he was arrested for driving under the influence in New Haven, Connecticut. At some point after that process started, Mong was hired by Dahlia, ABC News said.
Connecticut state police arrested Mong in April 2015 after he allegedly fled the scene of a highway off-ramp pileup he was accused of causing, ABC News said. After learning of the DUI, MTA pulled Mong off the road and eventually fired him, ABC said.
Dahlia had been cited several times in the past for speeding violations and was targeted for more frequent unannounced inspections, an official from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration told ABC News.
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