Passengers Complained of Brakes on Bus Before Fatal Collision in Mexico

SONOYTA, Mexico —  Several passengers had complained about brake problems on a bus before it crossed into oncoming traffic and rammed another bus head-on in northern Mexico, killing 25 people and injuring 23.

“They asked that the brakes be checked,” but the two bus drivers on board “paid them no attention,” said Vicky Salazar, a prosecutor and spokeswoman for the state of Sonora.

Earlier reports had put the casualties in the accident at 27 dead and 25 hurt. But Salazar and the Mexican federal highway patrol, who are jointly in charge of the investigation, confirmed the new toll.

Six of the dead were children. Many of the passengers on the two commercial buses were asleep at the time of Monday’s pre-dawn accident that spilled bodies, luggage and twisted metal on a desolate highway 12 miles south of the Arizona border.

It was unclear what caused the bus to drift into the opposite lane. Only one of the four drivers on the two buses survived, and investigators were interviewing passengers.

Antonio Vega Perez, 33, of Los Angeles was a passenger on the bus that crossed the dividing line. He said that at one point during the trip, he overheard the bus driver talking about mechanical problems. The driver said “there was some kind of problem with the clutch,” Vega Perez said. “The bus was making a lot of noise.”

The impact of the crash peeled the side off one of the buses, blew out the windows on both vehicles and sent wreckage flying 30 feet.

“I’d never seen such an accident, so many dead and injured,” said rescue worker Juventud Felix Solis. “You feel just like crying, but you know you’ve got to just get to work administering first aid.”

He said that people survived in the rear sections of the buses and that one or two of those survivors were walking about the wreckage in a daze when he arrived. Many others, he said, were trapped among the seats, some unconscious and others dying.

The bus that crossed over the dividing line of the two-lane highway was heading to the border city of Tijuana from Mexico City, a distance of about 1,500 miles. The other bus was traveling to Guadalajara in west-central Mexico from Tijuana, a distance of about 1,150 miles.

The two buses were carrying a total of 52 passengers, according to the Mexican news agency Notimex. The nationalities of the dead were not immediately known.