A bus driver who cannot speak English crashed into stopped traffic on Interstate 95 in Virginia early Friday, killing five people, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said.
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) head Derek Barrs and National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigators were on the ground, Duffy said on X. Among the dead were a 13-year-old girl and a 7-year-old boy.
Traffic slowed for a work zone on southbound I-95 in Stafford County, near Quantico, when the bus failed to brake around 2:30 a.m., the New York Post (NYP) reported. It struck a Chevrolet Suburban that was forced into an Acura that caught fire. Six vehicles were involved and 44 went to hospitals. (RELATED: Semi-Truck Driver Allegedly Caused 8 Crashes, Tried Strangling Driver)
The driver was identified as Jing S. Dong, 48, of Staten Island, the NYP reported. The Chinese-born U.S. citizen received his commercial driver’s license from New York in 2024. Dong was injured, and charges are pending.
Update on the tragic bus crash in Virginia:
Five people are dead, including a 13-year-old girl and a 7-year-old boy, after the driver of a motorcoach slammed into stopped traffic on I-95. @FMCSA Administrator Derek Barrs and our investigators are on the ground at the crash… pic.twitter.com/NWPBd9aLPr
— Secretary Sean Duffy (@SecDuffy) May 29, 2026
The Doncev family of Greenfield, Massachusetts, accounted for four deaths, the NYP reported. Dmitri, 45, his wife Ecaterina, 44, and children Emily and Mark were driving to a wedding in South Carolina when the bus hit their Acura. The fifth was a 25-year-old Worcester woman in the Suburban.
Duffy faulted New York’s licensing system. “Unacceptable. This is exactly why we are holding states’ accountable, enforcing the rules of the road, and cracking down on drivers who can’t speak English,” he wrote on X.
Federal investigators are reviewing Dong’s training records, driving history and New York’s licensing documentation, Duffy added. “Any company, trainer, or school that contributed to putting an unqualified driver on the road will face intense scrutiny,” he said.
The bus belonged to E&P Travel Inc. of Kings Mountain, N.C., a carrier already on federal regulators’ radar, the Boston Globe reported. An inspector in Delaware pulled an E&P Travel driver out of service on Sept. 19, 2025, for inadequate English and cited him for going 15 mph or more over the limit.
Federal rules updated last year force inspectors to immediately pull commercial drivers off the road if they cannot communicate in English, replacing the previous citation-only penalty, the Boston Globe reported.