Vote scheduled for final report of deadly 2020 Pa. turnpike crash in Mt. Pleasant Township

The National Transportation Safety Board is set to consider a draft of the final report detailing a January 2020 bus crash that killed five people and injured dozens of others along the Pennsylvania Turnpike in Westmoreland County.

The report, which will include details on what caused the wreck as well as recommendations to mitigate similar incidents in the future, will be presented to NTSB members during a virtual meeting on Feb. 8, said spokesman Keith Holloway. At that time, board members will discuss the findings, probable cause and potential safety recommendations.

If the report is adopted, Holloway said, the recommendations will be issued. It was not immediately clear what those recommendations could be or which entities they could be submitted to.

“We don’t have any enforcement authority, but when we make safety recommendations they do weigh a lot as far as our reputation of a safety perspective,” Holloway said.

He noted that any charges or fines issued in the case would likely come from local agencies.

The meeting, which begins at 9:30 a.m., can be viewed at ntsb.windrosemedia.com.

Officials responded to the turnpike in Mt. Pleasant Township near mile marker 86 early the morning of Jan. 5, 2020, after a 52-passenger bus belonging to Z&D Tours of Rockaway, N.J., crashed into an embankment, causing what state police described as a chain-reaction crash with three tractor-trailers and a car. The turnpike was closed for nearly 15 hours.

The NTSB released a preliminary report in February 2020, providing few new details on the incident.

According to the report, bus driver Shuang Qing Feng, 58, of Flushing, N.Y., was driving west on a downhill curve at 3:30 a.m. in light snow.

The bus veered toward the median in the middle of the road, then swerved right, crossing all lanes and hitting a steep embankment. A state police report suggested the bus hit the center barrier before swerving right, but the preliminary report did not include that detail.

After hitting the embankment, the bus rolled onto its passenger side and slid to a stop on the road, stretching diagonally across the westbound lanes. A FedEx tractor-trailer hit the bottom of the bus, ejecting two bus passengers, Eileen Zelis Aria, 35, of Bronx, N.Y., and Jaremy Vazquez, 9, of Brooklyn, N.Y., police said. They were killed.

The FedEx driver was uninjured, and the co-driver suffered minor injuries.

A UPS tractor-trailer based in Harrisburg then hit both the bus and the FedEx truck. The UPS truck was driven by Daniel Kepner, 53, of Lewistown, Pa., who was teamed with Dennis Kehler, 48, of Lebanon, Pa. They also died, along with the bus driver.

The driver of a car with two passengers swerved to avoid the crash, sliding off the road next to the UPS truck, according to the report.

A second UPS tractor-trailer also swerved off the road, hitting the car. The driver of the second UPS tractor-trailer and the people in the car were not hurt, police said.

The NTSB suggested that 59 passengers were on the bus. Of those, 49 were injured, along with the co-driver of the FedEx truck, officials said.

The final report was expected to take as long as two years to complete and will include information from further tests and a public hearing.