Officials: 3 dead, 17 hurt after MTA, charter bus collide

Three people were killed and 17 others were injured in Queens when an MTA bus was struck by a charter bus that is owned by a company with a history of dangerous driving early Monday morning, officials said.

A Dahlia Group, Inc. bus hit the Q20 bus, carrying 15 people, at the intersection of Northern Boulevard and Main Street in Flushing at about 6:15 a.m., police said. The MTA bus driver was making a right turn onto Northern Boulevard when the coach bus came speeding through the intersection and slammed into the rear of the city bus, surveillance video from a nearby business shows.

The collision sent the MTA bus spinning, and the charter bus crashed into the Kennedy Fried Chicken on the corner, causing “substantial” damage and sparking a small fire that was quickly extinguished, officials said.

Henry Wdowiak, 68, a pedestrian on the sidewalk, was pinned by one of the buses and pronounced dead at the scene, police said. The driver of the Dahlia bus, 49-year-old Raymond Mong, and a passenger on the MTA bus, 55-year-old Gregory Liljefors, died at area hospitals, police said.

The MTA bus driver, fourteen other passengers on that bus and two people in another vehicle were taken to area hospitals for treatment of a range of injuries, police said.

“Just shocking – you see the scene over there,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said at a news briefing Monday morning. “Hard to compare to anything I’ve ever seen – the sheer destruction from the impact of this collision.”

Michael Hinck, a spokesman with Flushing Hospital Medical Center, said 10 people were brought to the hospital for treatment. Of those, two were admitted to the hospital in stable condition, one was transferred to another hospital for unclear reasons and the rest were discharged.

Yong Jun Kim, 57, was sitting about four or five rows back from the driver on the right side of the MTA bus when he heard a "crashing sound" and was thrown forward, hitting his head against the seat in front of him, he said through a translator. 

Standing outside of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital Monday afternoon, Kim said he passed out and three or four minutes later he came to, only to find that most of the people on the bus were thrown into the aisle. 

Kim said he suffered three or four fractured ribs, hit his head on the seat in front of him and injured his spine. Doctors had told him not to leave the hospital, but he said he wanted to get to his uncle.

Mong blew through two red lights before crashing into the MTA bus, witness Sheila Baez said.

Baez, 43, was driving home with her boyfriend on Northern Boulevard when she told him to merge into a lane to their left. The next thing she knew the white coach bus came zooming by her in the lane they had just been in.

“He just flew right by us,” she said. “We were stopped at the red light and he just ate that red light.”

Mong ran another red light and then “smacked into” the MTA bus, hit two parked cars and mounted the sidewalk, crashing into the building, said Baez, who works at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.

“That could have been us. It could have been me, my child and my boyfriend, my dog,” she added.

The impact of the collision felt like an explosion, said Mike Ramos, the superintendent at a construction site on Northern Boulevard.

“I looked over and the buses were in the shop,” he said.

An investigation into the accident is ongoing, but the speed of the buses is a top concern, MTA Chairman Joe Lhota said.

“As we’ve observed, these buses spun around. That requires an enormous amount of speed,” he said.

Dahlia Group Inc., based in Flushing, has a history of dangerous driving, according to the Federal Motor Carriers Safety Administration. Since Sept. 5, 2015, the company has received seven unsafe driving violations, four of which were for speeding, the agency said.

City Councilman Peter Koo, whose office is located near the accident scene, said the intersection is well known to be busy and dangerous.

“This is a tragedy,” he said, staring at the mangled bus and storefront. “We don’t know what happened but sometimes drivers come speeding down from Northern Boulevard. Maybe they need to put speed bumps here.”

The crash prompted transit advocates to call for the mayor to more swiftly enact street safety changes under his Vision Zero initiative, which is aimed at ending traffic deaths in the city.

Northern Boulevard has been identified as a Vision Zero "priority corridor," but the city has yet to make any safety improvements to the part of the boulevard that runs through Flushing, according to Transportation Alternatives.

“Only a fraction of Mayor de Blasio’s Vision Zero priority corridors have been reengineered, and he has not published a timeline for when the remaining majority will receive treatment,” Paul Steely White, executive director of Transportation Alternatives, said in a statement. “While human error is difficult to prevent entirely, reengineering streets with safety upgrades is the single most efficient way to reduce crashes, and save lives when crashes do occur. On reengineered streets, crashes are both less likely and less deadly.”

The NYPD said the cause of the collision was still under investigation. The MTA driver, who has 10 years on the job, was being spoken to by investigators at the hospital, where he was in stable condition, Lhota said.

The National Transportation Safety Board said on Twitter it would send a team to investigate the crash as well. "NTSB sending team to New York City to investigate a two-bus crash in Queens that occurred this morning."

Dahlia Group, Inc. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Q13, Q16, Q20A/B, Q28, Q44-SBS, Q58 and QM3 buses were delayed or detoured in both directions as a result of the accident, the MTA said. Check the MTA website for the latest service changes.

With Lisa L. Colangelo and Alison Fox