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One killed as bus to canyon rolls

PHOENIX — A Las Vegas-based tour bus heading to the Grand Canyon rolled over in northwestern Arizona on Friday, killing one person and critically injuring two others, authorities said.

While a sheriff’s spokeswoman said the cause of the wreck around noon Friday was not yet known, a fire official who responded to the rollover said passengers reported that the driver was going too fast and lost control on the road. No other vehicles were involved.

“It was a heavily damaged bus, he slid down the road quite a ways, so there was a lot of wreckage,” said Lake Mohave Ranchos Fire District Chief Tim Bonney, who was in the first fire unit that responded to the crash about 15 minutes after it happened. “Just to put it in perspective, on a scale of zero to 10, an eight.”

None of the passengers was ejected from the vehicle but they were all in shock, Bonney said. “A lot of them were saying the bus driver was driving at a high rate of speed,” he said.

There were 48 people on the bus, including the driver, authorities said. After the crash, 44 people were sent to Kingman Regional Medical Center, including two flown by medical helicopter, spokeswoman Teri Williams said. All the others were treated for minor injuries, she said.

Anita Mortensen, a spokeswoman for the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office, said two people were critically injured.

The bus was heading to Grand Canyon West, about 2.5 hours from Las Vegas and outside the boundaries of the national park. The tourist destination sits on the Hualapai reservation and is best known for the Skywalk, a glass bridge that juts out 70 feet from the canyon walls and gives visitors a view of the Colorado River 4,000 feet below.

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