Driver in bus crash ID’d as Las Vegas student

MURRAY, Utah -- The driver in a deadly tourist bus crash in Utah on Monday was identified Wednesday as a 26-year-old community college student who lives in Las Vegas on a U.S. visa.

Utah Highway Patrol troopers said Yasushi Mikuni was distracted or drowsy when the bus carrying Japanese tourists veered off the road. Troopers said that when Mikuni tried to correct the vehicle, it rolled one and a half times, landing on its top.

The crash on Interstate 15 about four miles north of Cedar City killed three of the tourists and left 11 with broken bones, head or internal injuries.

The bus tour started in Las Vegas and was on its way to Bryce Canyon National Park when it crashed.

Authorities who blame driver error said Wednesday they found no mechanical problems with the Ford E-350 shuttle bus that would have caused the accident.

Prosecutors will review the investigation and decide whether charges are warranted. Efforts to reach Mikuni on Wednesday were unsuccessful and Iron County Attorney Scott Garrett was not available for comment.

Mikuni is studying for an associate's degree in travel and tourism, said College of Southern Nevada spokeswoman K.C. Brekken. Mikuni had been a student at the Las Vegas school since spring 2007 and took one class this summer, she said. He was registered for two more this fall, Brekken said.

A nurse who stopped at the crash site described the scene as eerily quiet, with tourists -- dead, dying or badly injured -- scattered across a highway median.

Kristi Christensen, 31, and her husband arrived within minutes of Monday's rollover.

"There were cameras, luggage and broken glass everywhere," said Christensen, speaking at Intermountain Medical Center in the Salt Lake City suburb of Murray, where four of the injured passengers are being treated.

Christensen tended to a half-dozen passengers for nearly an hour before the last of 13 ambulances had taken the injured away.

She arrived five minutes before the first paramedics and firefighters. At first, she tried unsuccessfully to revive a dying woman with a weak pulse who was thrown 30 or 40 feet from the bus.

Christensen found three other passengers trapped inside the bus.

"It was like, where do I start? Who do I go to? I wanted to quickly see who was alive or not," she said.

Japan dispatched a diplomatic official to Salt Lake City hospitals, but the man said he wasn't authorized to speak to the media.

Christensen said the bus driver was the only occupant she found standing or walking at the crash site.

"He was in shock," she said. "He was kind of in panic mode." The driver didn't offer a reason for the crash, she said.