New Jersey police identified the victim of the accident that took place on Tuesday night between a truck and a NJ Transit bus in the Garden State Parkway.
According to first reports, a Hispanic woman called Velma Castro lost her life in the collision, when she travelled in a church van along with 23 other people, according to news source North Jersey.com on its website.
According to the same source, the crash caused the death of the Hispanic woman and left four others injured, whose name has not been revealed to the media.
Brian Polite, spokesman of the state police, said that even though it's too early to say if the excess of weight the van was carrying was a factor that contributed to the accident, ongoing investigations seem to indicate that it is so.
"At this point in the investigation, yes, the van was overloaded" said the police spokesman, according to North Jersey.
Police units informed that the van in which the churchgoers traveled was headed for a church in Newark. Reverend David Castillo of the Ministry of the Pentecostal Church in Newark, said that the group of people that were headed for Newark were from a sister church in Spring Valley.
Reports of the accident indicate that the van in which Velma Castro traveled along with 23 others, switched lanes to the one in which the NJ Transit bus traveled, causing a collision after which the van spun and rolled over.
In the accident, Castro, whose age has not been revealed by the police, lost her life while 4 others, among which are two babies, were injured. The bus driver and the van's passengers were medically examined and released, reported News 12.
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