{"id":342481,"date":"2026-09-10T02:54:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T02:54:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/342481\/"},"modified":"2026-09-10T02:54:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T02:54:14","slug":"driver-involved-in-fatal-thruway-tour-bus-crash-sentenced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/342481\/","title":{"rendered":"Driver involved in fatal Thruway tour bus crash sentenced"},"content":{"rendered":"

The driver involved in a fatal tour bus crash<\/a> on the New York State Thruway last summer has been sentenced.<\/p>\n

Bin Shao, 56, previously pleaded guilty<\/a> to five counts of criminally negligent homicide. In Genesee County Court on Wednesday, the judge sentenced Shao to six months in prison for each count, to be served concurrently. He will also have to serve five years of probation and perform 500 hours of community service.<\/p>\n

According to Shao’s attorney, Daniel Lynch, his client has already served nearly seven months behind bars, meaning he will be released at this point, leaving only the probation and community service to satisfy his sentence.<\/p>\n

“He’s honest… I don’t know how else to say it other than he’s incredibly remorseful, and I think he’s shown that in court every time he’s appeared in court in this case,”\u00a0said Lynch. “He’s not an eloquent man; he’s a bus driver. He’s in a situation where he doesn’t necessarily know how to process this, but I think what he said was authentic and real, and that’s what he’s feeling. He’s showing it, he’s manifesting it and I think that’s something the judge took into account.”<\/p>\n

Shao was also originally charged with five counts of second-degree manslaughter, but those charges were later dropped.<\/p>\n

The bus, owned by M&Y Tour, Inc., was traveling east on Interstate 90 from Niagara Falls to New York City with 54 people onboard in August 2025. During an interview with the National Transportation Safety Board, Shao told investigators a non-empty water bottle rolled to his foot at the front of the bus. He then went on to say he bent down to pick it up and throw it away, but it bounced out of the trash can. That’s when he lost control of the bus before it swerved off the road and rolled over near Pembroke.<\/p>\n

Multiple passengers were ejected, dozens were taken to area hospitals and five people were declared dead at the scene.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd as I said to the court, whatever the sentence is, he will have a life, and there are five people \u2014 one young, promising academic\u00a0\u2014 who won\u2019t,\u201d Genesee County District Attorney Kevin Finnell said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Police say there was no evidence Shao, a naturalized citizen from China, was impaired or under the influence and that the bus showed no mechanical failure.<\/p>\n

According to investigators, eight passengers who were interviewed said the driver did not do a pre-trip safety briefing. One said they thought they were told about emergency exit windows at the start of the trip, but not how to open them, and seat belts were not mentioned.<\/p>\n

There is still the possibility that Shao could face civil lawsuits related to the crash.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The driver involved in a fatal tour bus crash on the New York State Thruway last summer has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":342482,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[113,11180,9,11,10,49,51,50,12,308,115,380,200],"class_list":["post-342481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-buffalo","tag-keegan-trunick","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-news","tag-public-safety","tag-rochester","tag-spectrum-news-staff","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=342481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/342482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}