YORK COUNTY, Va. (WAVY) — Court documents are shedding new light on a party bus crash in York County that left three dead more than a year ago.
21-year-old Jontae Russell, 25-year-old Xzavier Evans and 19-year-old Montia Bouie were killed in the crash when a tractor-trailer hit the bus they were traveling in from behind on eastbound I-64 near mile marker 241. The drivers of both vehicles were injured.
Troopers noted that alcohol bottles from the bus were scattered on the scene. In a recently released search warrant, we’ve learned that they also observed unknown pill bottles, along with a diabetic testing device in the cab of the tractor-trailer.
The documents also help explain what led to the crash in the early hours of Dec. 16.
The party bus vehicle had been modified to the point that it exceeded its own weight limit. Wiggins told the police it couldn’t go above 40 mph.
“I was driving in the far-right lane, I checked my driver-side mirror, I see a semi-truck approaching very fast. I began to change lanes and got hit from the back,” Antonio L. Wiggins, the driver of the bus, told investigators.
“I drove up on the bus, I did not see any tail lights,” the driver of the truck, Daniel L. Cramer, said.
The investigators “determined that both vehicles were traveling in lane #3 when the tractor-trailer rear-ended the party bus which made the party bus do a 180 degree [turn,] locks (sic) with the tractor-trailer and both vehicles ran off the roadway into the embankment on the left side of the road,” according to the document. “When the party bus struck the guard rail, the bus lost its entire cab shell, and all the passengers were ejected.”
The police suspected the truck driver had been driving longer than he was allowed to for that period of time and that the bus driver may have been driving on a suspended license. They sought to obtain their respective electronic devices to investigate those potential charges.
10 On Your Side has learned the name of the company which dispatched the bus. It belongs to Futrell’s Party Adventures LLC. The business is registered to an address in Chesapeake and appears to be owned by a woman named Towanda Futrell.