Hospital officials give briefing on victims of fatal bus accident near Crestline

Almost two dozen young people injured Monday in a bus crash in the San Bernardino Mountains are still hospitalized. They belong to a Korean American Presbyterian congregation in Pasadena.

The middle- and high school-aged students from Light of Love Mission Church in Pasadena were on their way home after a three-day retreat in the San Bernardino Mountains. The bus driver, a church volunteer, apparently lost control of the vehicle while rounding a bend on Highway 189 near Crestline.

The bus collided with an SUV and plunged about 20 feet down a snow covered ravine. The crash killed the 61-year-old driver.

Twenty-three other people were rushed to hospitals in Loma Linda and Colton. “The additional factor here is that some of these patients were young teenagers," says Loma Linda Children's Hospital trauma surgeon Donald Moores, "and we’re the children’s hospital, the pediatric trauma center, so there are some people sent to us specifically because of their young age.”

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Moores says his team treated more than a dozen crash victims. “Seven of them are still in the hospital with injuries ranging from broken bones to significant head injuries and spinal injuries. Three patients are in serious condition, four are in fair condition. There is one that has been to the operating, another who is there now and a third patient who will eventually require operative stabilization of orthopedic injuries.”

California Highway Patrol investigators plan to conduct an accident reconstruction using vehicle skid marks and other evidence to determine the cause of the fatal bus crash.