27 Killed, 25 Hurt as Mexico Buses Collide

MEXICO CITY —  At least 27 people died Monday and 25 were injured after two buses slammed head-on into each other on a desert highway in northern Mexico near the Arizona border, police said.

A later, unrelated collision on the same highway killed at least one member of a Long Beach family, according to officials.

“There were 25 killed [at the scene of the bus] crash, and two more died later,” said transit police Commander Hector Catano in Mexicali, capital of the nearby state of Baja California.

Police in the border town of Sonoyta said six children were among the dead.

That collision occurred at about 3:30 a.m. near Sonoyta in the state of Sonora, when the buses collided at high speed on a straight section of Mexico Highway 2. Sonoyta is about 175 miles southeast of Mexicali in a dusty desert region.

The driver of one bus, going from Tijuana to Mexico City, reportedly fell asleep and drifted across the center divider, slamming into the other bus, which was traveling from Mexico’s second-largest city, Guadalajara, to Tijuana, police said.

The impact crumpled half of one of the buses, said a Red Cross worker who helped with rescue efforts at the crash site.

Antonio Vega Perez, 33, of Los Angeles fractured his ankle and spent 10 minutes freeing himself from the wreckage.

“I woke because I heard shouts of pain and shouts of people asking for help and children crying out to their parents,” he said. “There were things--seats--and I think even a person on top of me.”

Some of the injured were taken to hospitals in Puerto Penasco, Mexico, and San Luis Rio Colorado, Mexico, said Robert Trebes, a U.S. Customs inspector in Lukeville, Ariz., where a triage post was established.

Hospitals in Tucson and Phoenix also received some of the injured. Five people--including some members of the family involved in the second crash--were listed in serious to critical condition at Maricopa Medical Center in Phoenix, hospital officials said. Their injuries included fractures, lacerations and possible head injuries.

An ambulance driver said the victims he saw had severe head and abdominal injuries as well as lower-extremity injuries.

The second accident, about two hours later a few miles away on Highway 2, killed Maria Lourdes Torres, about 35, of Long Beach and injured her husband, Luis, 32, and their four daughters, according to officials. Their Astro minivan apparently hit a concrete divider, skidded across the road and rolled over into a stream.

Luis Torres was listed in critical condition with facial and chest injuries at Maricopa Medical Center, said spokesman Joe Aguilar, and three of the girls, ages 10, 6 and 4, were in fair condition with minor injuries. The Torres’ 5-year-old girl was taken to University Medical Center in Tucson and was also listed in fair condition.

Trebes said that two of the children are U.S. citizens and that the rest of the family “has legal status” in the United States.

Spokesman Mike O’Connor of the Pima County Sheriff’s office in Tucson said Maria Torres died at the scene.

It was not immediately clear whether those involved in the first accident were Mexican or U.S. citizens, and there were conflicting reports about the number of passengers on the buses, as well as the number of dead and injured.

Catano said all those killed in the first crash appeared to be of Mexican origin, some traveling back to the United States after spending Christmas in Mexico.

The two buses were strewn across the asphalt, and identifying the dead proved difficult.

“I’ve been in the Red Cross for five years, and this is the worst accident I’ve ever seen,” said the Red Cross worker at the scene, Enrique Mota Cienfuegos, speaking by telephone from Sonoyta.

Times staff writer Lorenza Munoz and special correspondents Leo W. Banks in Tucson and Laura Laughlin in Phoenix contributed to this story.