Trapped, Pasco woman wiggles free from dead man to escape bus

After 16 months away, Nakia Coleman was headed back to Pasco on a charter bus from Mexico.

She’s gone there to clear her head after losing a son to suicide only to be involved in Tuesday’s horrific collision that killed her dog and landed her in the hospital.

Coleman thought she was dreaming. It was 3:30 a.m. and the Estrella Blanca bus was trying to pass another vehicle.

“That vehicle wasn’t allowing him to pass and it kind of ran him off the road,” she said. “That’s when (the pole) went straight through the middle of the bus.”

Coleman, 40, was trapped, pinned in her seat about two feet behind the interstate sign pole. A male passenger who had died had been pushed on top of her.

“It’s like one of those Final Destination movie things you never thought would happen in reality, especially to you,” Coleman said.

She managed to wiggle free and climb to the back seat where emergency crews opened an exit window.

“The other people were pinned in really bad,” she said. “It was a scary sight, being in there.”

Coleman, who works in food processing in the Tri-Cities, said she met two other men from Pasco on the bus, but doesn’t know what happened to them.

“I’m still breathing, so I’m thankful for that,” she told the Herald by phone from her hospital room. But the family’s Jack Russell terrier, Mia, had died in her cage in the cargo hold.

Coleman was taken to Mercy Medical Center in Merced to be treated for her sore back and legs. X-ray showed no broken bones.

As she was climbing out of the bus, she grabbed a cellphone and used it to call her mother in Pasco to let her know she was OK.

Coleman’s son Manuel Espinoza, 19, knew his mom was alive but didn’t know how to reach her. Her cellphone, purse and other belongings were lost on the bus.

He made several trips to the Pasco bus terminal to ask Estrella Blanca employees about reaching her and how she would get home.

They had no information and were referring all questions to California officials.

“We’ve been here three times already,” said a friend Brenda Morgan of Pasco. “You call (the bus company) numbers and they’re all dead.”

In Merced, Coleman was left wondering when she’ll get home and what’s left of her belongings.

“Everything I own was on the bus,” she said. “I was packed up to come home.”

Coleman said an Estrella Blanca representative said he would try to connect passengers with their luggage and offered bus rides to where they needed to go.

“I’m too terrified to get on another bus right now,” Coleman said. “I’m trying to arrange a way to get my son to travel with my sister from Washington.”

This story was originally published August 2, 2016 at 3:06 PM with the headline "Trapped, Pasco woman wiggles free from dead man to escape bus."