Three Dead After Buses Crash at Flushing Kennedy Fried Chicken

A charter bush crashed into a Kennedy Fried Chicken in Flushing early Monday morning — part of a collision between an MTA bus and private bus company Dahlia that killed one person on the scene and two more in the hospital, according to the NYPD. At least 16 more people were sent to the hospital for injuries.

DNAinfo reports that an MTA Q20 bus and the charter bus collided at the busy corner of Main Street and Northern Boulevard in Flushing around 6:16 a.m. NYPD is investigating what caused the crash. Many of the people sent to the hospital have life-threatening injuries and are in critical condition.

After the crash, a small fire erupted in the building of the restaurant, located at 136-04 Northern Boulevard. The fire department extinguished it around 7:30 a.m., according to FDNY.

The identities of the victims have not yet been released, and it is not yet clear if anybody was inside the restaurant at the time of the crash.

Update: One of the deceased was a pedestrian who got trapped under one of the buses, another was an MTA passenger, and the third was the driver of the charter bus. “It's hard to compare to anything I've ever seen — the sheer destruction from the impact of this collision," Mayor Bill de Blasio said at the scene.

The Dahlia truck drove into the MTA bus before barreling into the Kennedy Fried Chicken, according to the Post. Dahlia apparently has a history of bad accidents. In February 2016, one bus rolled over and injured 14 people, and federal regulators have cited the company three different times for traffic violations, including speeding and not obeying traffic laws.