The five victims killed in a tour bus crash in western New York included a Columbia University student from China, three New Jersey residents and resident of India, authorities said Saturday.

Xie Hongzhuo, 22, of Beijing, China; Zhang Xiaolan, 55, of Jersey City; Jian Mingli, 56, also of Jersey City; Pinki Changrani, 60, of East Brunswick, New Jersey; and Shankar Kumar Jha, 65, of Madhu Bani, India, were killed in the Friday incident, state police said. 

The crash happened near Exit 48A on the eastbound I-90 around 12:40 p.m., as a driver with Staten Island-based M & Y Tour Inc. was taking 52 passengers and a tour guide from Niagara Falls to New York City.

The driver apparently got distracted, causing the vehicle to swerve and roll over in a ditch, officials said.

“It first veered left into the median and then moved right, back across the travel lanes, rolling over off the right hand shoulder of the highway,” said National Transportation Safety Board member Thomas Chapman during a Saturday news conference.

THe NTSB is doing its own safety investigation, “parallel” to the law enforcement case being conducted by the New York State Police, he added. 

The crash happened near Pembroke in Genesee County on a stretch of highway where the speed limit is 65 miles per hour. 

NTSB investigators are looking at the driver’s performance, possible mechanical issues, highway engineering and other factors. The bus was equipped with a data recorder that will help determine its speed, the official said.

Investigators found a camera at the scene that is believed to be from the bus and could show them what was happening at the time of the crash, an official said.

“Our human performance investigator is going to look at the driver, particularly fatigue, distraction and driver qualifications,” said NTSB Senior Highway Factors Engineer Scott Parent. 

Investigators had a chance to see the bus Saturday. 

“It’s in bad shape, but it does appear to us that the bus was equipped with seat belts,” Chapman said. 

The state has a law requiring seat belt use on buses manufactured in 2015 or later; the bus involved in the crash was built in 2005, officials said. 

M & Y Tour Inc. failed a fifth of vehicle inspections 2022 and 2023, federal records show.

The company had a “satisfactory” safety rating from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration in 2024, despite failing nine inspections out of 43 in the two prior years, the agency’s records show. Almost all of the company’s drivers passed background checks, the records show. The company operates nine vehicles with 20 drivers.

M & Y Tour was fined $15,000 in 2019 by the state Department of Environmental Conservation for generating hazardous waste at a Brooklyn property without properly storing or managing it, according to a report. 

The business was ordered to clean up the area, according to WBEN. 

Owner Dewen Su didn’t immediately respond to messages seeking comment.