Criminal charges filed in deadly Merced County bus crash

The Merced County District Attorney’s Office filed four felony charges against the driver in a deadly Highway 99 bus crash last year that left four people dead and injured several others.

Mario David Vasquez, a 58-year-old Los Angeles man, is charged with four counts of vehicular manslaughter and five counts of misdemeanor vehicle code violations, the district attorney’s office said in a news release. He is scheduled to be arraigned in Merced Superior Court later this month.

Vasquez was driving a passenger bus registered to Autobuses Coordinados USA, Inc. carrying 30 people Aug. 2, 2016, when he veered off the road and crashed into a highway signage pole south of Livingston, ripping the bus in half.

An investigation by the California Highway Patrol’s Multidisciplinary Accident Investigation Team (MAIT) indicated Vasquez slept only 6.5 hours the day prior to the crash, although cellphone records contradict that he even slept that many hours, District Attorney Larry Morse II said.

Fatigue, cellphone use during the drive from Mexico and falsifying his daily log book all contributed to the charges against Vasquez, the district attorney’s office said.

This story will be updated.

This story was originally published August 1, 2017 at 9:45 AM with the headline "Criminal charges filed in deadly Merced County bus crash."