State Police: Bus Stowaway Treated Overnight for Injuries

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A 35-year-old man from Plainfield, N.J., was being treated Thursday night for burns he sustained from a fire inside the luggage compartment of a Greyhound bus traveling south on Interstate 95.

A medical helicopter flew the man from the scene of the fire on Thursday afternoon to Medstar Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C. The man sustained life-threatening injuries in the blaze, according to the the Virginia State Police.(He was not taken to INOVA Fairfax Hospital, as originally reported by the State Police.)

The State Police said they have determined the man apparently stowed away in the Greyhound’s luggage compartment earlier Thursday at its departure point in New York. They said they suspect that a lit cigarette started the fire inside the compartment.

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Seeing and smelling smoke frpm the fire, the driver of the southbound bus pulled over to the right shoulder of I-95 at about 2:30 p.m. Thursday, at the 144-mile marker near the exit for Garrisonville Road (Route 610) in Stafford County. As police and fire units responded, traffic on southbound I-95 was backed up for eight to 10 miles, according to media reports.

All 28 passengers exited the Greyhound without incident, the State Police said. After Stafford firefighters put out the fire, the Stafford County Sheriff’s Office arranged for all passengers to be transported via school bus to a safe location off the interstate.

They were later taken via school bus to the nearest Greyhound station in Fredericksburg to catch another Greyhound bus, according to WRC-TV NBC Channel 4.

The first bus had been en route to Atlanta with a stopover in Richmond to change drivers.

All southbound lanes on I-95 were open to through traffic by 5:09 p.m., the State Police said.