Roof peeled off shuttle bus in crash at McCarran

A church shuttle bus was severely damaged after crashing into a short-term-parking barrier at McCarran International Airport on Thursday afternoon.

McCarran spokeswoman Christine Crews said the driver of the bus, which belongs to Kingdom Life Ministries, apparently didn’t notice the height-restriction warning on the 7-foot steel barrier. Photos of the crash show the impact took the bus’s roof off, but Crews said the airport barrier wasn’t damaged.

Only the driver was in the bus during the crash, and he was unhurt, Crews said. He was on his way to pick up three to four passengers, she said.

Because of the crash, traffic long-term, and short-term parking, valet pickup areas and ride-share pickup areas used by Uber and Lyft were closed for about two hours. Traffic to long-term parking was temporarily routed to an economy lot north of Terminal 1.

All lanes reopened, and traffic flow returned to normal at 2:45 p.m., Crews said.

Justin Pechones, a driver for a Henderson taxicab company, sent a smartphone picture of the crash at about 12:30 p.m. He said he was in the cab line at McCarran when he saw the crash.

“I didn’t see (the shuttle bus) hit,” he said. “But I heard the glass shatter and then I noticed. The roof was peeling off. It went straight up.”

The Metropolitan Police Department said no one has been charged.

“This was not a major accident and no one was taken to a hospital,” Metro Lt. Jesse Roybal said.

Regional Transportation Commission spokeswoman Catherine Lu said her agency had donated the bus to the nonprofit ministry. A telephone call to Kingdom Life Ministries’ headquarters on Rancho Road rang continually but went unanswered.

Las Vegas Review-Journal writer Jessica Terrones contributed to this report. Contact Matthew Crowley at mcrowley@reviewjournal.com. Follow @copyjockey on Twitter. Contact Jessica Terrones at jterrones@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0381. Find @JessATerrones on Twitter.