39 Hurt, 7 Critically, in 2 Bus Collisions

A nearly full bus collided with a station wagon and slammed into a hotel’s concrete archway in Pasadena Monday morning, injuring 27 people, and another bus careened out of control in San Diego hours later, injuring a dozen people.

Three people were critically injured in the first crash and four in the second.

Witnesses told police in Pasadena that a red Volvo station wagon ran a red light and broadsided the MTA bus, forcing it to swerve into a tree and the archway of the Doubletree Hotel at Walnut Street and Los Robles Avenue.

Most of those injured in the 7:30 a.m. crash were bus passengers, including three who suffered broken bones and deep cuts, authorities said. No pedestrians were hurt.

The driver of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority bus, Rosalinda Avelino, 41, suffered a broken left arm. The driver of the station wagon, 50-year-old Patty Barnes of Pasadena, had only minor injuries, officials said.

The bus, operating on Line 260, was southbound on Los Robles, carrying as many as 30 passengers, when it was struck by the westbound car, police officials said.

Passengers described the scene in the bus as bloody and chaotic.

“All these bodies were flying and people were screaming and yelling,” said Adan Carrillo, 55, who was taking the bus to Huntington Memorial Hospital for treatment of diabetes.

Carrillo, a disabled construction worker, said he was reading a newspaper near the back of the bus when he felt a jolt and was thrown down against the seat in front of him. He said he bruised his right shoulder and hip but did not need hospital treatment.

“I fell down, and when I got up, there were bodies all over the place,” Carrillo said, adding that he saw several passengers bleeding profusely from cuts to their heads and faces.

Carrillo said hotel employees rushed outside with ice and towels to treat the injured. Fire officials set up a triage area on the pavement in front of the hotel. Frantic family members who rushed to the scene were sent into the hotel where they were briefed on the condition of the injured.

Fourteen of the passengers were Pasadena students traveling to Allendale Elementary, Blair High and Marshall Fundamental High School, according to school officials.

Eight were treated at area hospitals, most for cuts and bruises. Three students suffered broken arms or legs, school officials said.

One of those students was Jose Luis Delao, 16, who attends Blair High School. His uncle, Efrian Perez, said he rushed to the accident scene after police called to tell him that the boy had broken his arm in the crash.

“Thank God it wasn’t more serious,” Perez said as he watched investigators measure skid marks and examine other evidence on the street.

The cause of the crash is under investigation.

In the San Diego accident, a public bus struck an unoccupied, parked pickup truck shortly after 4 p.m. and flattened it against the retaining wall around a garden. A 48-year-old man walking on the sidewalk was pinned between the wall and the pickup, police said.

Witnesses heard the man crying for help and praying before crews could free him. He was taken to the UC San Diego Medical Center with a fractured pelvis and internal injuries, police said.

The driver, who sustained head injuries, and all 10 passengers were taken to area hospitals, most of them with complaints of pain, according to police.

The impact threw passengers in the rear of the bus to the front, where they lay on top of one another, witnesses said. Some lay in the street bruised and bloodied until paramedics came, said nearby resident Dolores Valdovinos.

Investigators were trying to determine whether the brakes on the bus had failed. It was making a left turn when it continued across the intersection and struck the pickup.

Irma Marquez, who lives nearby and rushed out to help after she heard the impact, said she heard the bus driver crying hysterically, “The brakes, the brakes!”

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Times staff writer Tony Perry in San Diego contributed to this story.