In the southbound lanes of I-95 at 2:35 a.m. Friday morning, what traffic there was on that interstate outside of Quantico, VA, started to slow down for construction crews working on their roadwork during the least-traveled time of the day.
As the cars slowed, came to a halt, and started creeping along again among the cones and flashing lights, doing that dreaded stop-and-go we're all so familiar with, a full-sized passenger bus carrying travelers on a trip from New York to North Carolina plowed into the line of cars at full speed.
The devastation and chaos were immediate and horrifying.
In the tangled, crushed wreckage of vehicles, five people lay dead, and forty-four were injured.
A mass casualty scene.
A bus crash this morning on I-95 in Virginia, has left 5 people dead and 34 injured. The bus failed to slow down in a work zone and slammed into several vehicles.
— SULLY (@SULLY10X) May 29, 2026
Officials confirmed that the driver survived the impact and criminal charges are pending. They are withholding the… pic.twitter.com/b6YMXTSDtI
The bus driver, who one of his surviving passengers described as 'swerving' as though he was tired...
Virginia State Police have identified the bus driver who crashed into slow traffic, killing 5 people and injuring 34, as Jing S. Dong of Staten Island, NY. Criminal charges are pending.
— SULLY (@SULLY10X) May 29, 2026
E&P, Inc. owns the bus out of North Carolina. Law enforcement has not released details on the… https://t.co/CnqZYnCPZ7 pic.twitter.com/XAZEBeCyWN
...slammed into a Suburban at the rear of the line of traffic. The impact killed the lady within - Priscilla R. Mafalda, 25 - and pushed her car into the SUV ahead of it.
The entire family of four in that crushed vehicle - Dmitri Doncev, 45, his wife Ecterina, 44, their 13-year-old daughter, Emily, and their 7-year-old son, Mark - burned alive in flames resulting from the crash.
"The preliminary investigation indicates that traffic was slowing southbound for an upcoming work zone. A bus, operated by E&P Travel and heading from New York City to Charlotte, N.C., failed to slow for traffic and struck a Chevrolet Suburban," police said in a news release. "The Suburban was then forced into an Acura SUV as well as additional vehicles. The bus struck additional vehicles as well."
It's bad enough if the driver was fatigued. The bus passenger they interviewed above said they'd left New York after 9, so had been on the road for five hours or so.
It was what they soon found out about the driver that horrified everyone.
Jing S. Dong is technically a naturalized American citizen, but has only been one for a couple of years and cannot speak nor write a single word of the King's English.
So the Chinese bus driver doesn’t speak or read English? How did he get citizenship under Biden? The rules are clear. https://t.co/eLg51JWLgs
— CH Crawley (@navycrawfish) June 1, 2026
God Almighty - this is unconscionable.
Kathy Hochul's New York State gave him a commercial driver's license (CDL) two years ago.
Update on the tragic bus crash in Virginia:
— Secretary Sean Duffy (@SecDuffy) May 29, 2026
Five people are dead, including a 13-year-old girl and a 7-year-old boy, after the driver of a motorcoach slammed into stopped traffic on I-95. @FMCSA Administrator Derek Barrs and our investigators are on the ground at the crash… pic.twitter.com/NWPBd9aLPr
...Local police confirm the driver of this motorcoach — a man from China who became a U.S. citizen — doesn’t speak English. He received his commercial drivers license from New York State in 2024.
Unacceptable. This is exactly why we are holding states’ accountable, enforcing the rules of the road, and cracking down on drivers who can’t speak English.
If you can’t be properly trained, read our road signs, or communicate with law enforcement, you have no business driving a bus.
Our investigators are reviewing New York licensing records, training documentation, and the driver's history. Any company, trainer, or school that contributed to putting an unqualified driver on the road will face intense scrutiny...
A lovely young woman and an entire young family, immigrants pursuing their own American dream, are now gone, most likely because a Chinese national could not read the caution signs for the road construction that came up in the middle of the night.
💔🚨 Look at the photograph one more time before you read this. The seven-year-old in the blazer. The thirteen-year-old in her school uniform. They were killed six hours after their mother finished baking for a wedding.
— Aric Chen (@aricchen) May 31, 2026
Their names were Mark and Emily Doncev. Their parents —… pic.twitter.com/L8VJflWvVd
...Their names were Mark and Emily Doncev. Their parents — Dmitri, 45, a nurse at Holyoke Medical Center, and Ecaterina, 44, a hairstylist — emigrated from Moldova in 2008 and built a life in Greenfield, Massachusetts. On the predawn morning of Friday, May 29, the four of them pulled onto Interstate 95 to drive to a family wedding in South Carolina. A carload of Ecaterina’s homemade desserts was in the back.
Dmitri’s brother Iuri was making the same drive in a separate car. At some point the two cars got separated. “Dmitri said, ‘You go ahead. I’ll catch up later,’” his niece told the Associated Press.
Iuri arrived at the house in South Carolina.
Dmitri’s car did not. He wasn’t picking up the phone.
That was when the family began to panic.
At approximately 2:35 a.m. near mile marker 146 in Stafford County, Virginia, a 56-passenger motorcoach operated by E&P Travel Inc. — heading from New York City to Charlotte — failed to slow for a work zone.
NTSB Board Member Tom Chapman said the bus was traveling at a high rate of speed with little, if any, braking before impact.
The bus struck a Chevrolet Suburban driven by 25-year-old Priscilla R. Mafalda of Worcester, Massachusetts. The Suburban was driven into the Doncev family’s Acura. The Acura caught fire.
All four Doncevs were killed. Priscilla Mafalda was killed. Forty-four others were hospitalized.
The bus driver — 48-year-old Jing Sheng Dong of Staten Island, New York — survived. He was arrested in his hospital bed and charged with two felony counts of involuntary manslaughter. He is being held without bond.
The whole precious family burned alive because Dong couldn't read English?
This is the car of an entire family that was ki11ed after a bus driver drove into the back of a stopped car.
— Kentucky Girl (@Notwokenow) May 30, 2026
The driver, Jing S. Dong, 48, of Staten Island, New York, is a Chinese born naturalized citizen who doesn’t read or speak English.
He attained his commercial driver’s… pic.twitter.com/AaQ8ZiwuZr
Secretary Duffy's going after anyone connected to the bus company and the driver.
..."Unacceptable. This is exactly why we are holding states accountable, enforcing the rules of the road, and cracking down on drivers who can't speak English," he added. "If you can't be properly trained, read our road signs, or communicate with law enforcement, you have no business driving a bus."
He also vowed that any company, trainer, or school involved in putting Dong on the road would receive "intense scrutiny" over the incident.
They can't get these people off the roads fast enough, and they can't force states that enable this carnage to their fiscal knees fast enough for me either.
Look how long this has festered and what it has cost in precious lives.
A charter bus barreling down I-95 in Virginia didn't even attempt to slow down before it plowed straight into a Chevrolet Suburban carrying 25-year-old Priscilla Ramos Mafalda from Worcester, Massachusetts.
— Demure Demure🦋💕 (@IncidentUpdate_) June 1, 2026
That single failure by the driver sent the SUV crashing into other pic.twitter.com/VO7HVM8lgM
Oh, it just makes me so ill.
He killed this entire family.
— MAGA - American Pitbull 🇺🇸 (@MelissaRNMBA) May 30, 2026
via @nypost pic.twitter.com/YGYUZqMw8t
All I can do is thank God we've got someone like Duffy on it.
Swing a big hammer, man.
My prayers are with the loved ones of the innocent lives lost and those who were hurt in this horrific crime.
And amen.
And late breaking just as I finished this up:
BREAKING: The US Department of Transportation confirms to @FoxNews that they have issued a subpoena to the state of NY after they allege the state has refused to cooperate with their investigation into Jing Shen Dong, the bus driver who allegedly caused a crash that killed five… pic.twitter.com/BJy8MJ59UP
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) June 1, 2026
... the bus driver who allegedly caused a crash that killed five people in Stafford County, VA on Friday morning. DOT says Dong is a naturalized US citizen who was born in China, doesn't speak English, and received his commercial driver's license (CDL) from the state of New York.
DOT says the subpoena is a result of not being able to "obtain the requested documents through other reasonable means."
DOT is demanding that New York turn over records on Dong's CDL, his entry level driving training, and the driving school he attended. DOT says those documents must be turned over by Wednesday at 10AM ET, or face consequences/penalties.
Of course, you realize, THIS MEANS WAR.
I can't wait.
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