Probe to recreate driver's itinerary

The federal team investigating a horrific casino tour bus crash in the Bronx will try to re-create the bus driver's movements through three days before the wreck. They also want to determine whether a tractor trailer traveling near the bus contributed to the accident.

The Saturday morning crash on Interstate 95 killed 14 people. Nine others, including the driver, Ophadell Williams, remained hospitalized Sunday.

"What we need to do . . . is to find out what the driver was doing 72 hours before the crash," National Transportation Safety Board Vice Chairman Christopher Hart said Sunday.

As the New York City medical examiner's office worked with families to identify the victims, the NTSB began taking stock of evidence that could help determine what happened. It is reviewing video footage from a camera inside the bus and data from an electronic recording device that may contain information about the vehicle's operation.

Investigators also will study GPS records from the tractor trailer, which Williams told police hit the bus and caused him to swerve. The bus flipped onto its side, skidded along a guide rail and was sliced open by a metal sign post.

Hart said in a briefing in New Rochelle that investigators would also seek video footage and hotel records, including room key card data, from the Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut, where Williams may have stayed while waiting to take his passengers back to Manhattan.

Williams, 40, of Brooklyn, has not spoken publicly. His family could not be reached.

Hart said the driver of the tractor trailer contacted state police after the crash and was interviewed. According to a law-enforcement official who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, the truck driver told police he had been following the bus. The cab and the trailer were impounded in Farmingdale on Saturday.

"Our first question is, was there any impact between the trailer and the bus?" Hart said.

Neither the truck driver nor the trucking firm has been identified. Hart said the company is cooperating with investigators.

Federal investigators also started interviewing witnesses, including two passengers, but as of yesterday had not interviewed the bus driver or the truck driver, Hart said.

The official who spoke to The Associated Press said passengers told police that before the accident, Williams swerved at times to the right for no reason. They also reported that they felt no impact from a truck before the crash.

The 1999 Prevost bus, owned by Brooklyn-based World Wide Travel of Greater New York Ltd., has an electronic recording device called an engine control module. Hart said investigators don't know what kind of data it records, but sent it to a laboratory in Washington for analysis.

State police said witnesses told them Williams was speeding before the crash. Investigators were still waiting for Williams' toxicology results.

The NTSB team will review the bus driver's experience and the quality of his training, as well as the bus company's training program and fatigue management program, Hart said.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration had flagged World Wide Travel for possible extra scrutiny because of violations of driver fatigue regulations over the past two years. The agency's records show that in the past two years, the bus company has had two other accidents in which people were injured.

Matthew Yu, manager of Sunflower Express, a Canal Street bus ticket office that sells trips on casino buses to Mohegan Sun, said ticket sales to the casino were down 50 percent Sunday.

"It's normal people are afraid," said Yu, who did not sell tickets for the World Wide bus. "Something happened and people stay away."

Around the corner on Elizabeth Street, the NYPD's Fifth Precinct was open to families and friends of the bus crash victims seeking guidance and information. The precinct was quiet and empty Sunday.