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Aug 10, 2008 11:13 pm US/Central
Vigils Held Across State For Bus Crash Victims
NORTH TEXAS (CBS 11 / TXA 21) ―
A busload of people who had attended a religious event in Missouri conducted an impromptu roadside memorial ceremony in Sherman, Texas for a group of people killed en route to the festival.
Mourners made a makeshift marker and sang a song.
An unlicensed bus carrying 55 members of a Vietnamese Catholic group from Houston to Missouri for the Annual Marian Days smashed into a guardrail and skidded off a highway early Friday morning.
Twelve people died at the scene and five more have died at area hospitals. At least eight passengers were in critical condition Sunday.
Across the state, parishioners packed churches to pray for everyone involved in the bus crash.
In Carrollton, Father Joseph Nguyen remembered all the victims at this mornings mass. He asked the congregation to pray especially for those still in critical condition.
"My parishioners can't believe this happened," said Father Nguyen, pastor of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ Vietnamese Church. "They plan to stand with them keep them in prayer and do whatever they can do with these people."
In Houston, family, friends and fellow church members gathered at the Vietnamese Martyr's Church to mourn those lost and comfort the bereaved.
Portraits of five victims who were regular attendees were surrounded by flowers at the foot of the pulpit. Candles flickered before them during Sunday services. At the service, parishioners placed flowers on an altar for the victims.
Family and friends visited their loved ones at various hospitals from North Texas to Houston. They say the past few days have been a nightmare.
Lily Nguyen's family lost one person in the crash. They are now praying for the recovery of another family member at Methodist Hospital in Dallas.
The Nguyen's say other family members usually go on this pilgrimage, but this year they backed out at the last minute.
"I don't know if we are going to trust another bus to take family members again," Nguyen said. "I think it's best if they could take some time to try to take loved ones to Marian days instead of taking the tour bus."
Meanwhile, the religious festival wrapped up Sunday on a somber note. Tens of thousands of Vietnamese Catholics attended the annual religious gathering.
Throughout the weekend, including Sunday morning's final mass, those 60,000 Vietnamese pilgrims, prayed for the lives lost in the crash.
"In every mass, and we have a lot of masses, and each mass we have a special prayer, to pray for them," said Father Lewis Nhien, Marian Days organizer.
Many of the Vietnamese priests from the Springfield-Cape Girardeau Diocese will head to Houston later this week for the funerals of those killed.
The crash in Sherman is among the nation's deadliest. In 2005, 23 people were killed near Dallas when a bus carrying nursing home residents away from Hurricane Rita caught fire.
(© 2010 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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