Charter bus runs off highway in Dallas, killing 12

A charter bus ran off a highway overpass north of Dallas and crashed onto its side on a roadway below, killing 12 people early Friday, authorities said.

Photo: Charter bus runs off highway in Dallas, killing 12

"We have confirmed fatalities," said Sherman police Lt. Robert Fair.

The Herald Democrat reported a dozen people were dead. The newspaper said the charter bus, which was headed to Missouri from Houston with 55 people onboard, came to a rest on its right side in the northbound lane of an access road below U.S. 75.

Scores of injured were taken to Sherman and Dallas hospitals by helicopter ambulances.

A spokeswoman at Wilson N. Jones Medical Center in Sherman said it was treating 17 patients.

A spokesman with Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas said four people from the crash are in critical condition there.

Another person brought to the hospital has died. It was unclear whether that person was counted among the 12 police said are dead.

Fair told The Associated Press the bus possibly "blew a tire."

Northbound traffic on the highway was shut down as ambulances and helicopters used the roadway and median to ferry the injured to hospitals. The newspaper said many of the victims were Vietnamese and that at least four translators were brought to the scene.

The accident happened close to where a trucker crossed the median and killed 10 people five years ago.

Sherman is about 65 miles (105 kilometers) north of Dallas.