INDIO, Calif., Oct. 24 (UPI) — The owner of a Southern California charter bus that was involved in a deadly crash over the weekend was sued for negligence in the past — once for a different accident that killed three people.
Teodulo Elias Vides owned USA Holiday, which operated the bus that crashed into a semi- truck early Sunday on Interstate 10 southeast of Palm Springs — killing 13 people, including Vides, who also performed bus driving duties for the company.
Thirty-one people were also injured in the crash, five critically. One of the dead was the driver of the semi.
Witnesses told police that most people were sleeping at the time of the crash, and the bus was returning to the Los Angeles area from a nearby casino.
One of the lawsuits was related to a 2007 crash between a USA Holiday bus and a car, which killed three people, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday. That case was ultimately dismissed.
Another lawsuit stemmed from a 2003 crash and was settled in 2006. The plaintiffs in that case argued that the bus was driven negligently.
Vides also received two speeding tickets in the past, although one was dismissed.
The California Highway Patrol said Sunday that the bus was traveling at a high rate of speed — so high that the semi’s trailer ended up 15 feet into the front of the bus, a CHP spokesman said.
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash. The investigation is expected to last about a week.
“We can’t definitively say what caused the crash,” CHP Commander Jim Abele said at a news conference Monday.
