Icy roads blamed in deadly Texas prison bus crash

By Jon Herskovitz and Lisa Maria Garza AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - Icy roads were to blame for a crash that killed 10 people when a prison bus slid off a Texas highway overpass and slammed into a moving freight train, officials said on Thursday. Four inmates and a corrections officer severely injured in Wednesday's accident remained hospitalized on Thursday. Two correctional officers and eight inmates died in the crash. The wreck involving the prison transport vehicle, which carried 15 people, was one of six accidents in a two-hour time period in the same highway area on Wednesday morning, the Texas Department of Public Safety said. The earlier accidents were not related to the bus crash. Three inmates were in critical condition and another was in serious condition at Medical Center Hospital in Odessa, a hospital official said. The guard, who was in critical condition, was transferred to a hospital in Lubbock, prison officials said. The eight inmates killed in the crash had been convicted of offenses that included possession of a controlled substance, aggravated assault, burglary and theft, according to state officials. Only the bus driver had a seat belt and the rest of the passengers were seated on benches without safety restraints. Some were ejected from the bus, which Sergeant Elizabeth Barney, a spokeswoman for the department, described as a minimum-security transport vehicle. The bus was traveling from Abilene to El Paso with 12 inmates and three corrections officers aboard. It was transporting prisoners from the Middleton Unit in Abilene, which houses male offenders and is not a high-security facility. "The offenders were handcuffed right wrist to left wrist in pairs. This is standard procedure when transporting offenders. They were not handcuffed to the bus," said Robert Hurst, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. (Additional reporting by Jim Forsyth in San Antonio; Editing by Bill Trott, Andre Grenon and Peter Cooney)