Crash of Tour Bus Leaves 15 Dead, 16 Hurt

A bus carrying a group of friends and family from Chicago to a Mississippi casino flew off a highway before sunrise Saturday morning, killing 15 people and leaving 16 others with lacerations, broken bones and grave internal injuries.

Safety personnel found a field strewn with bodies and luggage when they arrived at the scene. The roof of the bus was partially sheared off when it pitched down an embankment and rolled in a ditch, sending passengers flying. Rescuers cut the remainder of the roof off to free the single passenger who remained inside.

Horace Walters, whose 67-year-old brother, Herbert, was driving the bus when it crashed, watched as authorities hauled the upside-down bus from the field. Herbert was among those killed. At least seven of Walters’ relatives were on the bus. When he arrived at the scene, Walters said, “I prayed. I prayed for them.”

“Our family is just devastated,” said Walters, 58.

The crash tore through a group of neighbors from the Chicago area who took the nine-hour trip to casinos in Tunica, Miss., twice a year. Before they left Friday, the group had met at the Chicago home of Roosevelt Walters, who owns the bus. Walters Charter & Tours, the company he built, has dwindled over time to just one bus. His wife, Marean, arranged the gambling trips.

On board was a retired police officer, a steelworker, a postal worker, an auto mechanic, a state payroll clerk who had just been laid off and a middle-aged couple planning to marry. It was a fun-loving but straight-laced group that discouraged drinking and smoking, said Horace Walters, a retired captain of the Little Rock Police Department.

By Saturday afternoon, the Walters house was full of mourners, and wailing could be heard from inside. Marean Walters was among those killed, her family learned late Saturday.

At 5 a.m., the bus was about an hour short of its destination, traveling along cotton fields and rich flatland, when it drifted off the highway and down an embankment, twisting around a road sign. A motorist behind the bus had noticed no signs of erratic driving, officials said.

The bus left no skid marks on the highway, said Cpl. Mickey Strayhorn of the Arkansas State Police. It “just kind of faded,” Strayhorn said.

The force of the crash was enormous, sending the bus rolling end over end before coming to rest facing backward about 100 yards from the highway. Rescue personnel discovered some bodies under the wreckage and others thrown far away from the bus, laying in a field alongside pillows, blankets, snack foods and popped-open suitcases.

“There was nobody walking around -- everybody was laying down,” Assistant Fire Chief John Burns, of West Memphis, told Associated Press. “It wasn’t the scene where you see everybody screaming and crying for help.”

Safety personnel combed the field in silence. Eight of the survivors were rushed to Crittenden Memorial Hospital in West Memphis, Tenn., where one died and seven were treated for multiple fractures, said Ricky Griffin, the hospital’s nursing supervisor. Eight more were sent to the Regional Medical Center in Memphis, where six were in critical condition late Saturday night, with broken bones and grave internal injuries, said nursing supervisor Jackie Smart.

Extended families in Memphis and Chicago spent Saturday making frantic calls trying to locate loved ones. Some, like Isaac Clark, desperately booked flights to Memphis. Clark arrived from Chicago around 7 p.m., and found his wife, Sandy -- who had just been laid off -- at Regional Medical Center in critical condition.

Across from Clark’s family in the hospital’s waiting room sat Octavia Eddings, who flew down to find her brother, Theophilus Cannon, 55, who was on the bus with his fiancee, 49-year-old Shirley Fox. Both were listed in critical condition.

Eddings said Fox had two broken legs and Cannon suffered head trauma and two collapsed lungs. Eddings said she visited her brother in his hospital room and although he couldn’t talk, he did look at her and acknowledged her when she spoke.

Meanwhile, an advance team from the National Transportation Safety Board arrived to begin researching possible causes of the crash. The bus was taken to a warehouse in Marion, where it will be examined for possible defects.

Herbert Walters, the driver, is a stickler for safety procedures, his brother said.

“I have ridden and driven with my brother and it is very hard for me to imagine him falling asleep,” Horace Walters said. He added that he had “no clue” what had happened.

Chicago Tribune contributed to this report. Also contributing were Times researchers John Beckham and Lianne Hart.