3 Girl Scouts in Bus Crash Leave Hospital

Three teen-agers were sent home but 22 other people remained hospitalized Saturday while police and federal authorities continued to investigate the cause of a bus crash that killed four Girl Scouts, two chaperones and the bus driver in Palm Springs.

The girls released from medical care were identified as Carrie Meese, Tracy Schiebel and Kim Jones, all of whom were being treated at the Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage. At least one more girl is expected to be released today from Indio’s John F. Kennedy Memorial Hospital as many of the injured teen-agers showed improvement, nursing supervisors said.

Two crash victims were still listed in critical condition, both at Desert Hospital in Palm Springs, and nine were described as serious. Remaining patients were in fair to good condition.

Palm Springs police, meanwhile, joined representatives of the California Highway Patrol and the National Transportation Safety Board in exploring possible causes of apparent brake failure on the bus, which veered off a steep mountain road. Investigators were examining the bus at a city storage yard to try to “reconstruct the way it came apart,” but as yet no new information had come to light, a police spokesman said.