Massachusetts
5 from Mass. dead when bus hits cars in Virginia, state police say
A bus crashed into vehicles slowing for a work zone on Interstate 95 in Virginia early Friday, killing five people and injuring dozens, including the driver, authorities said.
The crash happened at about 2:35 a.m. on southbound I-95 in Stafford County, near Quantico. All five of the people who died were in vehicles hit by the bus, and 44 people were taken to hospitals, including three in critical condition, police said.
“The preliminary investigation indicates that traffic was slowing southbound for an upcoming work zone,” state police said in a news release. “A bus failed to slow for traffic and struck six vehicles.”
Police said there were “approximately” 34 passengers on the bus.
“We’ve got patients in multiple hospitals. We’ve got the driver at a hospital here,” said Peyton Vogel, a Federal Transit Administration spokesperson who was on the scene. “I’ve got to say, this is one of the most tragic things I’ve ever seen. Absolutely tragic.”
Four of the fatalities were in one car, which caught fire. State police said the victims were a 45-year-old male, a 44-year-old female, a 13-year-old female and a 7-year-old male, all from Greenfield, Massachusetts. The fifth victim, a 25-year-old female from Worcester, Massachusetts, was in an SUV that was struck by the bus.
Virginia State Police Virginia State Police The aftermath of a deadly bus crash on I-95 in Virginia’s Stafford County on Friday, May 29, 2026.
Reaction to the deadly crash in Massachusetts
The mayor of Greenfield, Virginia Desorgher, issued a statement on the deaths of four city residents in the crash.
Our entire community is shocked and profoundly heartbroken by the tragic news coming out of Virginia. Early this morning, a horrific crash took the lives of five people, and we have received the painful confirmation that four of those individuals were residents of Greenfield.
To the families, friends, and neighbors of those we lost: there are no words that can fully ease the weight of this sudden and unimaginable grief. Please know that you are not walking through this dark time alone. The Greenfield community stands with you, mourning alongside you, and we extend our absolute deepest condolences and prayers.
We are also holding the dozens of others who were injured in this crash in our thoughts, wishing them a full and swift recovery.
The City of Greenfield is fully committed to supporting those affected by this horrible loss. In the coming days and weeks, we will work to ensure that the grieving families have access to the resources, care, and comfort they need. I ask all Greenfield residents to wrap your arms around our neighbors with the compassion, kindness, and unity that defines our community.”
Update on investigation in Virginia
State police identified the bus driver as Jing S. Dong, 48, of Staten Island, New York. Charges are pending, authorities said.
Mary Washington Healthcare said it received 19 patients from the crash. It posted online that seven of the patients were taken to its trauma center in Fredericksburg, where four were being discharged and three remained in treatment — one in serious condition and two in critical condition. Twelve were taken to its hospital in Stafford, where they were later discharged in good condition.
The National Transportation Safety Board posted online that it was sending a “go-team” to conduct a safety investigation into the crash and that it would have a spokesperson at the scene.
The southbound lanes had reopened by noon, but traffic was still backed up for a couple of miles, according to a state transportation advisory.
Bus company had satisfactory record
The bus was operated by E&P Travel Inc., based in Kings Mountain, North Carolina. A compliance snapshot from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration showed only one injury accident involving the company’s vehicles in the previous two years and listed its safety rating as “satisfactory.”
The company was incorporated Nov. 24, 2023, by Shuo Liu, according to records from the North Carolina Secretary of State’s office. Liu is also listed as the registered agent. The FMCSA site said the company operated four vehicles and had 11 drivers.
While it is too soon to say what caused Friday’s crash, federal authorities have been grappling with interstate passenger bus safety issues for decades.
Following a series of passenger bus crashes in 2008 that killed 41 people, the U.S. Department of Transportation published a Motorcoach Safety Action Plan.
The NTSB investigated 16 fatal motorcoach crashes between June 1998 and January 2008, finding that driver-related problems such as fatigue, medical condition and inattention accounted for 56 percent of the accidents. The agency said driver-related problems were responsible for 60 percent of the fatalities in those crashes.
Among the actions recommended were creation of a pre-employment driver history screening program and a national drug- and alcohol-testing database “to enable motorcoach operators to determine if drivers have a history of violating DOT alcohol or drug rules.”
Massachusetts
Two men indicted for Hinsdale robbery after ‘cigarette trail’ leads through Vermont, Massachusetts
HINSDALE, N.H. (ABC22/FOX44) – Two men from Massachusetts have been indicted after they allegedly stole more than $200,000 in cigarettes and fled in a stolen U-Haul van before setting it on fire.
According to court documents, the men robbed the T-Bird Mini Mart on Brattleboro Road in Hinsdale, New Hampshire back on March 15. They then allegedly drove the U-Haul north into Brattleboro, Vermont before heading south on Interstate 91 down in Massachusetts.
Cartons of cigarettes reportedly fell from the back of the van as it drove through Brattleboro, which were estimated to be worth more than $50,000. The “trail of cigarettes” was reportedly used by investigators examining surveillance footage to track the path of the van leading up to the arrest of two suspects last week.
Richard Conner, 64, of Greenfield, Massachusetts, and James Ferguson, 66, of Worcester, Massachusetts, were arrested on Friday.
According to court documents, Ferguson was also seen on camera earlier in March stealing the U-Haul van in Northampton, Massachusetts.
The two men now face federal charges under the Hobbs Act and, if convicted, could spend up to 20 years in prison.
BOSTON (WWLP) – The Healey-Driscoll Administration and the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation announced the opening of 24 swimming pools for the summer season across the state.
This initiative includes the return of its free Learn to Swim Program for children and expanded lifeguard services at 30 DCR swimming areas. Registration for the free swimming lessons begins on Monday, June 22, providing children between the ages of 4 and 12 the opportunity to learn life-saving skills.
The DCR’s efforts aim to provide residents, visitors and families with safe places to swim and cool off during the summer. This commitment to water safety is supported by extending lifeguard coverage to seven days a week, which began last Saturday, running from 10:15 a.m. to 5:45 p.m., though continued coverage is subject to staff availability.
DCR Commissioner Nicole LaChapelle emphasized the importance of aquatic education. “Every child deserves the opportunity to learn how to swim. Swimming is more than a summer activity –it’s a life-saving skill that helps children safely enjoy our pools, lakes and beaches with confidence,” LaChapelle said. “By offering free swimming lessons at pools across Massachusetts, we’re helping remove barriers for families while helping more children safely enjoy the outdoor spaces that belong to all of us.”
The Learn to Swim Program will be offered at 19 DCR pools throughout Massachusetts and is structured into three sessions during the summer. Each session consists of eight half-hour group swim classes tailored for beginner-level swimmers and organized by age.
The curriculum for the classes is based on the American Red Cross and focuses on water safety and basic swimming skills. Registration is required and will operate on a first-come, first-served basis, closing once classes at each facility are full.
Participating DCR pools for the program are located in Agawam, Boston, Cambridge, Chelsea, Chicopee, Clinton, Fall River, Fitchburg, Hyde Park, Lawrence, Malden, Melrose, Milford, Somerville, Springfield, Watertown and Worcester.
The DCR is also actively recruiting certified lifeguards for its beaches and swimming pools for the current summer season. Positions are available through Labor Day and offer competitive hourly wages ranging from $22 to $27, depending on the position and associated certifications. More information about lifeguarding opportunities and application details are available on the agency’s lifeguarding webpage.
Beyond lifeguard services, the DCR maintains water safety at its state beaches and waterfronts through regular water quality testing at all 79 designated swimming areas. These areas are equipped with ropes and buoys to delineate swimming sections. Safety signage, which can be translated into nine languages including Spanish, Portuguese, Vietnamese and Traditional Chinese via a QR code, is also present.
To enhance safety, life rings are available for public use at both guarded and unguarded swimming areas in case of an emergency. All DCR swimming pools are equipped with chair lifts to provide water access. Several pools also feature ramps or zero-depth entry and select pools and spray decks offer beach wheelchairs for use.
All facts in this report were gathered by journalists employed by WWLP. Artificial intelligence tools were used to reformat information into a news article for our website. This report was edited and fact-checked by WWLP staff before being published.
Local News Headlines
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If you watch a movie, send an email, or put your photos in the cloud, there is a data center involved. With the rise of AI, there is more need for data storage and that means more power and more water. So, more Massachusetts communities are saying they don’t want them.
Data centers are growing increasingly unpopular. How unpopular? Polling shows people would rather live near a nuclear power plant. A Gallup poll found 71% of Americans would oppose a data center being built near their home and 53% would oppose a nuclear reactor.
Communities across the country have been fighting to stop the construction of mega sized data centers used to power the future of artificial intelligence.
In Massachusetts, several projects have been put on hold. The city of Lowell recently passed a one-year moratorium to stop the building or expansion of data centers. Lowell is the site of the largest data center in the state.
Markley data center in Lowell
The Markley data center is a mammoth building. It was built by Markley in 2015 on the site of an old Prince Spaghetti factory. Markley cleaned up the lot, painted the building black and set up a complex digital warehouse which stores data from more than a hundred customers ranging from hospitals to universities to police stations.
Like all things data center, this one comes with controversy. Jake Fortes lives in his childhood home where he takes care of his elderly parents. The data center, about 100 feet away, dwarfs his home.
Fortes says the building has nicknames including the “dungeon” and the “Death Star.”
“It’s nicknamed by a lot of residents in the neighborhood the dungeon,” Fortes said. “Because it seriously is just this black building that looms over us.”
Fortes said the rows of industrial air conditioners on the roof of the data center constantly hum and he claims exhaust from the four metal chimneys that rise from the data center’s emergency generators flow toward his bedroom windows.
“You will hear the A/C units. That’s a constant. And it’s worse in the summer,” Fortes said.
Markley has two data centers in Massachusetts. They built their first on top of Macy’s in downtown Boston in 2013.
From Lowell to Los Angeles, there are coast to coast concerns about what these data centers can do to the environment. From the massive amount of energy they use, to the incredible amount of water they need to keep the equipment from overheating. Some large data centers can use up to five million gallons of water every day. But the owners of the Lowell data center say it is not a drain on resources.
WBZ-TV’s David Wade asked Markley for tour of the data center, which they never do, and they agreed. They have grown frustrated with the negative narrative of data centers across the country and wanted to show they are different than the huge data centers built solely for AI companies.
Markley’s corporate VP Adam Burnham took him around the 350,000 square foot facility. The front entrance is teeming with a few dozen people, filled with colorful artwork and a TV monitor showing old video of a train that used to run through the property.
Beyond that there are long hallways with white tile floors and white walls that lead to rooms full of loud machines taking in, transforming and distributing large amounts of electricity throughout the building. How much electricity? Markley doesn’t say. Most data centers don’t. It’s why some lawmakers like Senator Elizabeth Warren are calling for more transparency from all data centers. But Markley’s Boston location boasts up to 30 megawatts of power, which is comparable to what tens of thousands of homes could use at any given time.
“Many petabytes” of data
There is a constant hum from the air conditioning machinery that helps to cool down the racks of servers.
How many servers are in the building? “There must be thousands,” Burnham said. “From hundreds of different customers.”
And how much data is that? “It would be hard to even quantify it. To use technical terms, it would be petabytes,” Burnham said. “Many petabytes for many customers.”
You have heard of megabytes and gigabytes but what is a petabyte? Well, just one petabyte is equal to roughly 250 million high resolution photos or the storage capacity of 250,000 smartphones or 13 years’ worth of continuous high-definition movies.
Markley says it stores data from all different types of companies. Financial companies, life science companies, universities, public safety companies. All those servers need lots of water to feed the system that keeps them cool.
How much water is used?
Some data centers use millions of gallons of water every single day. Markley says over the past year, they have used between 60,000 and 120,000 gallons of water per day. Those numbers match up with some of their water bills that WBZ was able to obtain.
Besides the effect on water and power, another criticism of data centers is once construction is done, they don’t create many jobs. Markley brought Lou Antonellis, a representative from the IBEW, an electrical workers union, to our shoot. Wade asked how many union workers he had working inside the building.
“Right now, it’s a little bit of a slow period. Probably about a dozen,” Antonellis said. That’s it. A dozen. Antonellis said there were also another dozen pipe fitters inside. He said there can be 80-100 workers when there’s a big project on site.
Hopes to expand in Lowell
But Antonellis and the IBEW say they really want Markley to expand. New buildings mean new construction jobs. WBZ learned Markley has been buying more land nearby with hopes of expanding, including an old power plant up the road. But they have a problem. The city of Lowell recently voted for a one-year moratorium on data centers. It means no new building, and no expansion.
On the final stop on the tour, the Markley people wanted to show the emergency generators that neighbors have complained about.
An hour earlier, Jake Fortes, the neighbor who calls the building the Death Star, had predicted they would take David Wade to the generators, and it would be less noisy than usual.
“Usually when they detect that there’s a reporter coming, they will turn it off and it will go very quiet and you will hear the birds,” Fortes said.
When they took David Wade to the emergency generators, which they fire up for a test every week for five minutes, you could barely hear the machines over the sounds of chirping birds.
“So, it’s not under a complete load, but this is the typical noise you’re going to get,” Burnham said.
Wade asked if the generators weren’t running at “full load” were they running at 20%, 50%, 80%? They couldn’t answer.
Then Wade asked if he thought neighbors had been exaggerating about the noise at the data center and the answer was clear. “I think they’re exaggerating, yes,” Burnham said.
If you have a question you’d like us to look into, please email questioneverything@cbsboston.com.
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