A tour bus traveling from Niagara Falls to New York City crashed on a highway outside Buffalo on Friday, killing multiple passengers, including at least one child, and leaving some people trapped beneath the vehicle, officials said.

The crash occurred on the New York State Thruway about 30 miles east of Buffalo, when the driver of the bus lost control of the vehicle as it traveled at “full speed,” said Trooper James O’Callaghan, a spokesperson for the New York State Police.

Every passenger on the bus had at least some sort of “cut, bruise or abrasion as an injury,” he said. The state police said that the bus had originally been chartered in New York City and that a manifest provided by the bus company said that 52 people, including the driver, were on the bus when it crashed.

O’Callaghan said that most of the passengers were not wearing seat belts and that many had been ejected from the vehicle when it crashed. He said that the bus was “extremely damaged” but that the driver was “alive and well.”

The fatalities include at least one child, but multiple passengers remained unaccounted for, O’Callaghan said. The bus was the only vehicle involved in the crash, he said.

The seriousness of the crash was clear from the flashing red and yellow lights of the more than three dozen emergency vehicles lining both sides of the highway as the rescue operation continued.

Around 3 p.m., several firefighters set up a black tarp to shield one side of the bus from public view. Reporters and other onlookers were kept hundreds of feet away.

O’Callaghan said the driver had lost control of the bus for “unknown reasons,” and had then gone “into the median, overcorrected and ended up in the ditch.”

“The bus did roll; there were multiple ejections. There are multiple people trapped and there are multiple fatalities,” he said.

Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a statement on social platform X that she had been “briefed on the tragic tour bus accident” and that her office was “coordinating closely” with the state police and other agencies that were responding to the crash.

Margaret Ferrentino, president of Mercy Flight, which provides emergency air transport to hospitals, said the organization’s helicopters had made multiple trips from the crash site to local medical centers.

By 2 p.m., helicopters had taken two injured children to Oishei Children’s Hospital in Buffalo, one adult to Erie County Medical Center in Buffalo and another adult to Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester.

“I think we will be busy for a while here,” Ferrentino said. “It is a multiagency response, both air and ground.” She added: “I pray for the victims and for the safety of the responders.”

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Liam Stack/Lauren Petracca
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