Mother, daughter injured in Pa. Turnpike bus crash last year file suit

A woman and her 11-year-old daughter who were severely injured in the fatal bus crash last year on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in Westmoreland County have filed a federal lawsuit alleging negligence.

The complaint, filed Saturday in U.S. District Court, names as defendants Z&D Tours Inc., which operated the tour bus; FedEx Ground Package System Inc., whose tractor-trailer crashed into the bus after it initially crashed into an embankment; and Brandon Stowers, the driver of the FedEx truck.

Cheng Ying Lian, 39, of Athens, Ohio, and her daughter, Ivy Ou, are the plaintiffs. The lawsuit said Lian sustained a traumatic brain injury and severe physical and emotional injuries, although it does not specify what those are.

After the Jan. 5, 2020, crash, the complaint said, Lian and Ou were both “totally incapacitated for a significant period of time,” and “remain partially disabled to date.”

The lawsuit seeks $10 million in damages for Lian and $5 million for Ou for what it called negligence, negligent hiring and training and negligent supervision.

A phone number for Z&D did not work Tuesday. A message left with FedEx was not immediately returned.

According to the lawsuit, the bus, carrying its driver and 61 passengers, was operated by the Rockaway, N.J.-based Z&D Tours. The National Transportation Safety Board said that an inspection a month before the crash showed no problems with the bus.

The bus crashed at mile marker 86.1 around 3:30 a.m., in an area where the speed limit is 70 mph but an advisory sign warns westbound drivers to slow to 55 mph for an upcoming left turn, the NTSB said in a preliminary report released a month after the crash.

Although there was a light snow falling, the report said, the roadway had been treated with salt.

The NTSB said the bus veered from its lane toward the median, onto the left shoulder, then veered right again. It crossed all travel lanes and the right shoulder before striking a steep embankment and rolling onto its passenger side. Its final resting place stretched diagonally across the westbound lanes.

It was then struck by a FedEx Ground tractor-trailer traveling in the right lane. That was then struck by a UPS tractor-trailer traveling in the inside westbound lane.

Both the driver and a co-driver in the UPS truck, Daniel Kepner, 53, of Lewistown, and Dennis Kehler, 48, of Lebanon, were killed. So too were two passengers on the bus — Eileen Zelis Aria, 35, of Bronx, N.Y., and Jaremy Vazquez, 9, of Brooklyn, N.Y. — and the driver of the bus, Shuangqing Feng, 58.

Fifty-nine passengers on the bus were injured.

According to the report, a 46-year-old driver of a Mercedes-Benz traveling west saw the tractor-trailers hit the bus and swerved off the road to avoid hitting them.

Two brothers from New Jersey who also were passengers on the bus filed a lawsuit against Z&D in Essex County, N.J., in March.

One of the brothers, Quwanjay Ellis, said in that complaint that he believed the bus had been traveling at an unsafe speed and that he saw the driver leaning and attempting to steer the bus left as it went down the slope. Ellis’ brother, Anthony Ellis, sustained serious injuries in the crash.