SHERMAN, Texas — A survivor of a bus accident near Sherman that has claimed 14 lives and left many others injured said she was one of the "lucky ones" who encouraged other passengers to hang on until help could reach them.
Leha Nguyen, 45, of Houston, was intermittently somber, cheerful and then on the verge of tears as she described a scene of panic, jumbled bodies and heroism to journalists huddled at Wilson N. Jones Medical Center in Sherman.
She was one of 55 passengers on the Angel Tours charter bus that crashed at about 12:30 a.m. Friday on U.S. 75 near Sherman. The group from a Vietnamese Catholic church in Houston was headed to a religious festival in Missouri when the bus crashed.
The bus company had been banned from interstate operations earlier this year because of safety violations, federal record show.
With a strong Vietnamese accent, she described how she was jolted from near slumber as the bus violently left the road and landed on its side. Nguyen said she was awakened by "noises like people panicking" when the bus crashed. She recalled someone lying across her leg, another woman next to her with her arm crushed and a third woman on top of her who couldn't move.
"After I (moved) my leg I (saw) another person down there who did not move at all," she said. "And then I (knew) it was real bad."
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