6 Killed, 6 Injured in Tour Bus Crash : Van Returning to L.A. From Las Vegas Flips Over Near State Line

Six people were killed and six others were injured Wednesday when a converted van bringing Korean-speaking tourists back to Los Angeles from Las Vegas went out of control and overturned on Interstate 15 in the California desert just west of the Nevada border.

California Highway Patrol Sgt. Jim Pitsor said the van, operated by Doremi Tours of Los Angeles, had evidently been moving “more than 55” m.p.h. when it skidded more than 190 feet and rolled over at least once, ejecting 10 of the passengers, before coming to rest on the center divider of the highway, about 47 miles southwest of Las Vegas.

“Two of the passengers were dead when the first officers arrived on the scene,” Pitsor said, “and another died before emergency transport arrived. Three more were either dead on arrival at hospitals in Las Vegas or died shortly afterward.”

Names of the dead and critically injured, he said, were being withheld until families could be notified. The bodies of those who died at the scene were transported to the coroner’s office in San Bernardino.

Pitsor said a team of specialists from Los Angeles is in charge of investigating the cause of the crash. Preliminary indications were that the driver, identified as Sung Il Kim, 31, may not have been properly licensed, he said.

“The only license we could confirm for the driver was a Class III,” he said. “That is for private automobiles and does not allow driving anybody for hire.”

Pitsor said the vehicle appeared to be a 1987 Ford van, converted for use as a tour bus, which would normally be able to accommodate about 10 people in addition to the driver.

“But the body appeared to be oversize, and it may have accommodated more. At any rate, at least a dozen people were aboard when this happened,” he said.

In Los Angeles, Doremi Tours owner-operator Jisoo (Hyman) Kim declined to talk to newsmen before departing for the crash scene. But employees of his firm said driver Kim--who they said is not related to the owner--moved to the United States from Korea two years ago and had been driving for the firm for four months.

They said the bus was converted to carry a total of 15 passengers and had taken 10 elderly women members of a church group to Las Vegas on Tuesday, but would not necessarily have had them on board for the return trip Wednesday.

The employees explained that Doremi offers a $10 round-trip fare from Los Angeles to the Imperial Palace Hotel in Las Vegas, with an indefinite stay-over there.

“You come back when you want to, in any of the vans where there is room,” an employee said.

Doremi advertising employee Joseph Ko said the tour company has been in business since last August and has two vans that are used for tours to Yosemite and the Grand Canyon in addition to the Las Vegas operations.

An official with the state Public Utilities Commission in Los Angeles said there is no record of a permit issued to Doremi Tours. Such a permit, the official said, would be required to operate a van carrying 12 or more passengers. And in San Francisco, another PUC official said there is no record that Doremi had registered any federal Interstate Commerce Commission authority to operate a tour bus across a state line, as would also be required.

Michael Benson, a spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board in Washington, said late Wednesday, “We are seeking information on the accident to determine what involvement we would have in investigating it.”

The NTSB also investigated the crash last May 30 of a charter bus near Walker, Calif., that killed 21 elderly Southern Californians and injured 20 other passengers. It ruled last week that the bus driver’s failure to slow down on a dangerous mountain curve probably caused the vehicle to plunge into the Walker River.

CHP officers at the scene of Wednesday’s crash said three ambulance companies and two ambulance-helicopters responded, but one of the ambulances broke down en route back to Las Vegas and its patient was picked up by a helicopter dispatched from Kingman, Ariz., and taken to Valley Hospital in Las Vegas, where she died a few minutes after arrival.

A spokeswoman for University Medical center in Las Vegas said one woman who arrived by helicopter and another who arrived by surface ambulance were both in critical but stable condition after surgery, while three men whom they identified as Ki Yan Chung, 35, Ho Jin Kim, 24, and Young S. Hyung, 41, were in stable condition after treatment for head, neck, back and internal injuries.

A man was reported in critical but stable condition at Humana Hospital Sunrise, where a woman patient died shortly after arrival, and a spokeswoman for Desert Springs Hospital said a man brought there by surface ambulance was dead on arrival.

Helicopter pilot Bob Barnes, a Vietnam veteran who operates a “Flight for Life” helicopter out of Valley Hospital, said two of the crash victims were already dead and paramedics were attempting cardiopulmonary resuscitation on another when he arrived at 11:50 a.m., about 40 minutes after the accident was reported.