About 50 people were injured Thursday when a tour bus rolled over about twenty miles northeast of Los Angeles.
The accident occurred on the 210 East, west of the Irwindale Boulevard exit, at about 10 a.m., Officer Saul Gomez of the California Highway Patrol told The Huffington Post.
The overturned bus, which stopped traffic for miles, had been headed to the San Manuel Indian Bingo and Casino.
After going through a chain-link fence, "the bus somehow made its way to the right shoulder and overturned on the right shoulder," Gomez said. Other vehicles were involved in the incident but officers are unsure what caused the crash.
"The investigation into the cause of the crash is ongoing but we're more concerned with injured people right now," Gomez said.
Five people -- between the ages of 50 and 80 -- were transported by air to the LA County USC Medical Center, hospital spokesperson Rosa Saca told HuffPost. She described the injuries as non-critical.
An NBC aerial video shows firefighters tending to people on green, yellow and red triage tarps indicating severity of injuries (red being the most severe).
The bus was from Da Zhen Travel Agency in Monterey Park, which is less than 10 miles east of downtown LA. The company's Yelp page says it provides "all kinds of group types and trips, such as Las Vegas trips, local Casino trips, local transfers, airport service, long distance charters, weddings and much more!"
John Fu, the company's attorney, said it is too early to comment on the incident but that "the matter is under investigation at this point."
Da Zhen received a "satisfactory" rating during its last major review by federal inspectors, in 2010, and has had no crashes in the past two years, according to U.S. Department of Transportation records. Most of the gamblers aboard of the overturned bus were elderly and many did not speak English, the Associated Press reports.
UPDATE: California Highway Patrol said that the tour bus driver, 55-year-old Jinquan Yang, is to blame. He made an "unsafe lane change" to the left, struck the car "and then overcorrected to the right," Officer Elizabeth Van Valkenburgh said. Yang has not been charged; the driver whose car he struck was not injured.
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