Crash Kills At Least 17 Tourists In Mexico

Passengers From Rerouted Phoenix Flight Killed After Bus Plunges Into Ravine

(AP)  A bus carrying tourists including passengers of a flight from Phoenix crashed in western Mexico on Saturday, killing at least 17 and injuring 13 according to bus company and government officials.

The Vallarta Plus bus was carrying 35 passengers from the resort city of Puerto Vallarta to Guadalajara before dawn when it ran off a mountain road and plunged down a 250-meter ravine, the Nayarit state prosecutor's office said in a news release.

The office reported 17 dead: 13 men, three women and a 1-year-old child. The bus' driver, identified as 28-year-old Madiel Coronado, was among the injured.

But state Red Cross spokesman Miguel Langarica said at least 18 people were killed and 13 injured - five gravely. The discrepancy could not immediately be reconciled.

Vallarta Plus spokesman Daniel Rios said as many as half of the passengers were from a flight that had left Phoenix on Friday for Guadalajara. The plane had been rerouted to Puerto Vallarta along with 17 other flights because of a fire at the Guadalajara airport.

Rios said at least one family of eight were Mexicans legally living in Phoenix who were in the country for Independence Day celebrations. Four of them were injured and one, the 1-year-old child, was killed.

Authorities said four of the injured were from Los Angeles and nearby Riverside, California, but did not give hometowns for the dead.

The crash occurred near the town of Compostela, about 120 miles from Guadalajara.

Mexican newspaper Reforma said the Guadalajara airport was shut down after a flight from Cancun caught fire. It was unclear whether there were any injuries from the fire, and no one answered phone calls placed to the airport late Saturday.

[iceman_1960]

Is screen_name_ still around ?

I''''ll give CBS the benefit of the doubt until next week.

If the Nazi tactics of screen_name_ are allowed to persist into next week, then I''''ll will be outa here.

screen_name_ has been shutting down Comments sections by posting one inane pro-war message hundreds of times in succession.

I would be willing to do the work, pro bono, of altering the software here to detect and stop repetitive posting like that.

I would do that for free.

[hecsauto]

MEXICO, what a beautifull country, what a beutifull culture. Best food in the world... How about get over your worries and thoughts and join our powerfull race for a shot of Tequila and watch our country grow powered by BEANS. Where there is Mexicans there is Mexico. PS Don''t ever forget that America is not a country, it is a continent that puts Mexicans in place centuries ago. It takes a qualyfied skilled driver to operate in Mexico! VIVA USA VIVA MEXICO.

[sgtrds]

Sounds like bigotry,
from a black woman?

Posted by DIXXSON at 10:57 PM : Sep 15, 2007

You don''t think a black woman could also be a bigot? Of course they can! This story is an auto accident in Mexico, not an excuse for racist comments about Mexicans in general. For Pete''s sake if the story was about a bad taco in Tijuana some people would say it because all Mexicans are filthy cooks and we need to keep them out because they''ll poison us with re-fried beans. Grow the hell up. Besides I could easily claim to know a Mexican who says they all drive badly on purpose, only want to live on welfare and never take a bath, but my claiming to know such a person doesn''t make that claim true.

[dixxson-2009]

While visiting my hometown
in Tenn, I met with a sister
who complained of the new influx of mexicans. Just that they were dangerous,
wreckless drivers.
Sounds like bigotry,
from a black woman?
I could only respond that back home wks earlier, while
headed to work, the light changed for my movement,
but a car was approaching
the red light side at a high speed from some distance I waited
I didn''t move. It was
a car overloaded with mexicans!

[sgtrds]

The wife and I took a tour bus, a small 12 passenger van really, from Acapulco inland to the mountain city of Taxco a few years back. It''s 4 hours in each direction and the trip up into the hills wasn''t bad, but it was pretty obvious that the driver was in a hurray to get home on the return run, so it was a real E Ticket ride AND it was in the dark!!! He threw that van into those cliff side curves like an old Jame Bond movie! Some of the other passengers kept asking him to slow down because they said they wanted to live to see their kids again, but to me it was worth the price of the whole cruise just for that ride! What the hell, ya gotta die from something, right?