At least 10 people have died after a prison bus left Interstate 20 and crashed into a train just outside Odessa, Texas.
Eight inmates and two correctional officers were killed, Jason Clark, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said in a press release.
Clark added that five people — four inmates and one staff member — have been taken to a hospital.
The bus was transporting prisoners from Abilene to El Paso when it crashed just outside the West Texas city of Odessa. The Odessa American reports:
"Sgt. Elizabeth Barney with the Texas Department of Public Safety with DPS and Sheriff Donaldson said the bridge was icy when the bus drove over it, causing the bus to drive off the bridge. Donaldson said the bus struck the train in the middle of the train cars, at which point the train dragged the bus for a bit before coming to a stop."
"Their loved ones will be in our thoughts and prayers," Brad Livingston, the department's executive director, said in a statement.
Update at 1:35 p.m. ET. Severe Injuries:
West Texas Public Radio's Tom Michael says a hospital spokesman tells him the injuries were severe.
He says the bus appears to have come off an embankment, not off an overpass as we reported earlier.
Tom says that the rail car that was hit by the bus was carrying UPS cargo, so at the moment UPS boxes are strewn all over the ground surrounding the railway.
Update at 9:40 p.m. ET. Names released:
In press release Wednesday night, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice released some information about the dead and severely injured from the bus crash.
The twocorrectional officers who died — Christopher Davis, age 53, and Eligio Garcia, 45 — had worked in Texas prisons for, respectively, 17 years and 23 years.
The only information provided about the dead inmates was their names and ages, which ranged from 22 to 44:
Correctional officer Jason Self, 38, who has worked in Texas Prisons for more than 18 years, remains in critical condition at a hospital in Lubbock, Texas. Staff member Hector Rivera, 37, also remains hospitalized in serious condition..
Three prisoners — Terry Johnson, 22, Damien Rodriguez, 22, and Remigio Pineda, 34 — are hospitalized in Odessa, Texas. Johnson and Rodriguez are in critical condition and Pineda is in serious condition.
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