Police to examine wreck in NJ Turnpike bus crash

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. (AP) — Police said they will examine the wreckage of a tour bus today to help determine what caused it to crash as it traveled from New York City’s Chinatown to Philadelphia, killing the driver and a passenger.

The one-vehicle crash Monday night on the New Jersey Turnpike — one of the nation’s most heavily trafficked highways — happened just days after a bus from a Connecticut casino crashed as it was returning to New York City’s Chinatown neighborhood, killing 15 people.

In Monday’s accident, driver Wei Wang, a 50-year-old Taiwanese national who lived in Forest Hills, N.Y., was thrown through the windshield, and several passengers were badly injured, state police Sgt. Stephen Jones said.

Passenger Troy Nguyen, 20, of Royserford, Pa., died after being transported to a hospital in New Brunswick.

Preliminary evidence suggests the bus in Monday’s crash, operated by a Pennsylvania company, went off the road onto the grassy median before striking a concrete overpass support, Jones said. It was traveling south on the turnpike when the crash occurred around 9 p.m. Monday just south of Exit 9 in East Brunswick, about 40 miles southwest of Manhattan, but it didn’t flip onto its side as initially believed, police said.

The cause of the crash hadn’t been determined and the investigation could take several weeks.

The white tour bus came to a stop at an angle with its damaged front section pointed off the highway and onto the grassy median.

The bus was moved to an impound lot where state police said it would be mechanically inspected today and all available data would be taken from its electronic components.