Party bus crash kills one, injures another

One man is dead and a second man has been detained after a party bus spun out of control and crashed on Interstate 280 near Portola Valley late Sunday.

The California Highway Patrol says the bus — a converted Chevrolet Express 3500  — was heading northbound a little before 11 p.m. when the driver lost control.

The vehicle went off the freeway near Alpine Road, hit a tree and came to a stop after overturning in an embankment.

When officers arrived they found one man in a passenger seat dead and a second injured man nearby.

CHP Officer Amelia Jack told SFBay it has not been determined if the injured man  — who is not cooperating with investigators — was the driver.

Jack told SFBay:

 “We’re trying to figure that out. He was out of the vehicle, we don’t what his role was.”

Authorities have not released the names of the man killed or of the man being questioned, and have not provided details of the injuries suffered by the man they’re trying to question.

With the cause of the crash still under investigation, it has not been determined how fast the party bus was going, or if drugs or alcohol could have played a role in the crash.

The CHP says the vehicle was in the process of being registered to a company called Maximo Limo Party Bus, but was not being used for an event at time of the crash.

Attempts to reach the company for comment were unsuccessful.

The crash Sunday comes after two other incidents in the area in a little more than a year involving party buses.

A 25-year-old woman was killed after falling out a door of a bus during a fight with another woman as the vehicle drove on Highway 17 near Los Gatos in July of 2012.

And in May of this year several people riding on a party bus suffered minor to moderate injuries when the bus was involved in a crash with a car on Highway 101 in Burlingame when the driver of the car hit the center divider.

Police said the driver of the car had been drinking before the crash.  His passenger — burlesque performer Sarah Klein — was killed.