Dale William Osborn of Spanaway was the first person identified Tuesday by Oregon authorities as a fatality in the bus crash Sunday on Interstate 84 in Eastern Oregon.
Oregon State Police said Osborn, 57, was one of nine people who died after a tour bus slid off an icy hill and down a 200-foot embankment east of Pendleton, Ore.
Police said Osborn’s wife, Darlene Sue Osborn, 65, was hospitalized. At least 38 people were injured.
Osborn’s daughter, Jennifer Sherman of Colorado Springs, Colo., said she was told her father was hit in the head by a rock and that her mother was thrown into a riverbed.
She last spoke to her father two weeks ago.
“He was very happy,” Sherman said. “He’s a very good man.”
Two Osborn siblings had gone to Pendleton on Monday to look for their parents after calling hospitals in the area.
KIRO-TV reported that the Osborns had moved to Spanaway from Colorado several years ago after they bought a mobile home park for seniors. A neighbor told KIRO that the Osborns had fixed up the park, where they also lived.
The tour bus had been returning to Vancouver, B.C., on the final leg of a nine-day tour of the western United States. The trip was organized by a British Columbia travel agency to carry tourists traveling in small groups. Many of the bus passengers were South Korean or Korean Americans.
Some of the survivors retrieved their passports and other belongings Tuesday so they could finish their journey to Canada.
State police escorted others one by one to collect their property, which was strewn across a snowy hillside.
The Red Cross said some of the survivors were too terrified to get on another bus, so a nearby Ford dealer offered to drive them in smaller passenger vehicles. Some were expected to begin the trip today.
“The pieces are kind of getting into place about getting back to normal, and they want to go home,” said Mary Naman, a nurse from Portland working with the American Red Cross to help survivors.
Many of the survivors did not know one another before the trip but have supported one another and formed a bond through shared experience, said Sandy Ramirez, a Red Cross psychologist. While they’re eager to get home, it will be tough to separate from the other survivors who understand what they’re going through, she said.
Oregon State Police and National Transportation Safety Board investigators were expected to finish an inspection of the bus Tuesday.
Staff writer Debbie Cafazzo, The Associated Press, the East Oregonian of Pendleton and KIRO-TV contributed to this report.
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