Crash kills 5 in Virginia including family of 4 traveling to wedding. Bus driver charged
A family of four from Massachusetts was killed in an incident. bus crashed into many vehicles We were headed to a wedding in Virginia with a car full of homemade desserts to celebrate.
The family wedding will be held Sunday in South Carolina, but it will also be a time to mourn the loss of Dmitri and Ecaterina Doncev and their two children, Emily and Mark, a relative said Saturday.
“A son, a father, the whole family, everyone who is dear to us,” Carolina Bublik said.
The Doncevs died when a bus was hit by a chain reaction of vehicles slowing toward a work zone on Interstate 95 in Stafford County around 2:35 a.m. Friday, authorities said.
Police said the bus hit a Suburban and then the Acura carrying the Doncev family. Priscilla Mafalda, 25, of Worcester, Massachusetts, was in the Chevrolet SUV and was also killed.
Mary Washington Healthcare said more people were treated for injuries, including one in critical condition, although most have been discharged.
Bus driver Jing S. Dong, 48, of Staten Island, New York, has been charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter and additional charges are possible, Virginia State Police said. The Stafford County prosecutor’s office said Dong was arrested and will remain in custody while he is treated for his injuries at the hospital.
Prosecutors said in a statement that Dong’s first hearing would not be scheduled until after his release, but the judge approved him to be held without bail until then. He also said prosecutors saw enough probable cause to believe Dong was “driving in a criminally negligent manner.”
It was unclear whether Dong had an attorney who could speak on his behalf. The case has not yet appeared in the state’s online court records, and a call to the county’s public defender in a closed office Saturday went unanswered.
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash, a months-long task separate from the work of state police. NTSB board member Tom Chapman revealed few new details but said the bus was traveling at a high rate of speed.
“It seems pretty clear that due to the speed and severity of the collision, there wasn’t much to do at all with any braking,” Chapman said.
The bus that takes people from New York to North Carolina is E&P Travel Inc., headquartered in Kings Mountain, North Carolina. It was operated by.
The driver’s language proficiency will be part of the NTSB investigation, Chapman said. Citing the police, US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on social media that Dong, a Chinese citizen, did not speak English.
Dmitri Doncev, 45, was a nurse working at Holyoke Medical Center. Ecaterina Doncev, 44, was a hairdresser who spent days preparing desserts for a family wedding, Bublik said.
He said they immigrated to the United States from Moldova in 2008 and settled in Greenfield, Massachusetts.
Dmitri and his brother Iuri tried to stay together as they traveled to South Carolina in separate vehicles.
“They broke up at some point,” Bublik said. “Dmitri said, ‘You go on. I’ll catch up later.’ It was a big shock when Iuri came home. Dmitri should have arrived at the same time. When his car didn’t arrive and he didn’t answer the phone, the family started to panic.”
