Bus Crash in New Orleans Kills 23

Twenty-three senior citizens on a Mother’s Day gambling tour died Sunday morning in New Orleans’ deadliest traffic accident when their chartered bus hurtled across three lanes and over a concrete embankment.

Nineteen other passengers, mostly women in their 70s and 80s, suffered serious or minor injuries in the wreck.

“It was horrible, it was horrible,” said Margaret Messore, who saw the bus’ trajectory from her van on Interstate 610. “The front of the bus was all crashed in, people were hanging out and crying for help.”

It took bystanders and dozens of rescue workers four hours to stabilize the bus--which was so badly twisted that its front wheels were left two feet above the ground--and dig through the shattered glass and steel for victims. At New Orleans’ Charity Hospital trauma center, where eight passengers lay in critical condition Sunday, injuries included multiple fractures and skull injuries and were seriously exacerbated by the victims’ ages, spokesman Jerry Romig said.

The Custom Bus Charters vehicle, en route from suburban La Place, La., to Casino Magic in Bay St. Louis, Miss., about 90 miles away, had 46 people aboard, including members of a gambling club that set off on casino expeditions twice a month.

Police said the bus was heading east when it swerved abruptly from one side of the road to the other, narrowly missing other cars, before vaulting the embankment near New Orleans’ City Park golf course.

Terrell Walker, Custom Bus Charters’ safety director, said another car cut the bus off, forcing it to swerve right. Driver Frank Bedell, 49, who suffered leg and chest injuries, has worked for the bus company three years and had a clean record, Walker said. The bus had new brakes and no previous mechanical problems, he added.

Within hours of the accident, the City Park golf club became a command center, and New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial had launched a press briefing to announce an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board.

But friends and family members were dazed by all the still-unanswered questions.

“I’m not sure how much identification my mother had on her. She doesn’t carry a purse, just a little pouch. She always said, ‘I’m going to a casino, and I don’t want anyone to rob me,’ ” said Rose Garnett, whose mother, 84-year-old Florence Mathieu, was still missing Sunday afternoon. Garnett was one of several dozen family members who had come to the golf club for information on their loved ones.

At hospitals, medical workers were struggling to identify many of the injured.

“Many of these patients were taken off the bus without purses . . . so when they came into the hospital they had no other identification other than their ability to talk to us,” said Charity Hospital’s Romig.

“It’s been a very tough scene because . . . there was a terrible number of people killed at the site,” Romig said.

Outside one of the hospitals, George Tassin waited for news of eight family members who had been on board. Tassin said the passengers included his wife, his daughter and an aunt venturing out on a trip for the first time since the recent death of her husband.

“My aunt finally decided to go this one time and this happened,” he said.

Charter buses carrying seniors to gamble have flowed steadily down the highways as casinos proliferate in New Orleans and Mississippi. “It’s become quite a thing for the people in this area to do,” said Chris Palmisano, administrator of Place Dubourg Retirement Center in La Place, where some of the victims lived.

The trend has led to a spate of gambling charter bus accidents in recent months, including a crash on Christmas Eve that killed eight people and injured 15 others en route to Atlantic City.

Inside the lobby of Palmisano’s building, residents waited fearfully for information from an employee stationed in New Orleans.

“We have about 10 residents we’re concerned about,” Palmisano said. Two of those residents were definitely in New Orleans hospitals, but about eight others thought to have been on the bus hadn’t been located by afternoon, he said.

The passengers from Place Dubourg, all of whom were women, were members of a gambling tour like dozens of others hosted daily by Gulf Coast casinos.

Although many family members of supposed Place Dubourg passengers had gone to New Orleans, relatives also were still calling the apartment complex constantly Sunday. “They’re asking, ‘Where’s my mother? Where’s my mother?’ ” she said wearily. “Not knowing is the bad part for all of us.”

*

Times researcher Lianne Hart and Times wire services contributed to this report.