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Bus Crashed En Route To Religious Festival

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Aug 8, 2008 9:34 am US/Central

Bus Crashed En Route To Religious Festival

CARTHAGE, MO. (CBS 11 / TXA 21) ― Police say the charter bus which crashed in Sherman Friday morning was headed to a religious festival in Carthage, Mo.

The 31st annual Marian Days festival began Thursday.  The Carthage Convention and Visitor's Bureau says as many as 70,000 Vietnamese Catholics from across the country are expected to visit the city for the celebration.

Marian Days was started in 1977 by a group of Vietnamese immigrants.  After Saigon fell at the end of the Vietnam War, the immigrants were brought to the United States and eventually settled at an unused Catholic seminary in Carthage.    

They soon began the three-day festival honoring the Virgin Mary, which is held on the 25-acre grounds of the seminary.  It features a large mass each day and other events.  Many groups that travel to the festival set up tents from which they sell traditional Vietnamese food.

The Carthage Police Department says there was a large gang fight during Marian Days in 2003.  The department says it maintains a large presence at the festival, in part because of the fight.

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