At Least 4 Die in Bus-Van Collision

A tour bus carrying residents of a retirement home collided head-on with a delivery van Tuesday, killing at least four people and injuring 19 others, authorities said.

Twenty-two people were aboard the bus, authorities said. The van, which carried only the driver, burst into flames during the accident 30 miles west of Milwaukee.

More than a dozen people were taken to area hospitals. At least four were in critical condition.

“There was no one that was not injured in this accident,” Jefferson County Sheriff’s Capt. Kevin Stapleton said.

Both drivers were among those killed, he said.

Mike Leslie, 21, a clerk at a nearby gas station, was driving on a highway behind the van and watched it turn left onto a county road. He was about to follow when he saw flames--no van, just “fire and black smoke.”

“And then through the flames came the bus and the bus slammed into the ditch,” he said. “I couldn’t believe it. It was just so fast.

“If I would have turned, I would have been there, right behind the van.”

Leslie later helped take people off the bus. Some were unconscious and one woman was seriously hurt. “Her face was bleeding pretty bad from her nose,” Leslie said. “She said her back and stomach hurt.”

Zinzendorf Hall, a retirement home in Watertown, chartered the bus to take people to Milwaukee, said Ehren Bittorf, the manager of bus owner Transportation Services of Watertown.