Jing S. Dong of Staten Island, New York, and charter bus driver for E&P Transportation charged in fatal Virginia bus crash that killed Greenfield, Massachusetts family of four & Priscilla Mafalda of Worcester. Family id as Dmitri and Ecaterina Doncev, and their children, Emily and Mark. Crash left another 44 passengers injured amid questions of how non English speaking Chinese driver was able to obtain license and operate vehicle.
The driver of a bus charter with little to zero command of English has been charged with the deaths of a Greenfield, Massachusetts family of four traveling to a wedding after ramming into a vehicle that then slammed into the family’s automobile.
Jing S. Dong, 48, of Staten Island, New York, was charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter after the charter bus he was driving failed to heed speed warnings on Interstate 95 in Stafford, Virginia on Friday morning.
Social media identified the victims as Dmitri Doncev, 45, Ecaterina Doncev, 44 and their two children, 13-year-old Emily and 7-year-old Mark.
Bus driver was ‘driving in a criminally negligent manner,’ according to prosecutors
At the time of the crash, the family had been traveling to a relative’s wedding in South Carolina, when, at approximately 2:35 a.m., a bus operated by E&P Transportation failed to slow for traffic in a work zone and crashed into a Chevrolet Suburban driven by 25-year-old Priscilla Mafalda of Worcester. Mafalda’s Suburban was then forced into the Doncev family’s Acura SUV and other vehicles. Of note, Mafalda was also killed in the crash, CBS News reported.
According to Virginia State Police, approximately 44 patients were transported to area hospitals, three with critical injuries. The bus which had earlier departed from NYC was traveling to North Carolina.
‘It was horrible,’ said bus passenger Wayne Tobin told CBS News. ‘It was just like blood everywhere; it was people holding their head. Their heads were bleeding.’
Dong was injured as well. The crash is still under investigation and police say additional charges are pending. Prosecutors stated they had probable cause to believe Dong was ‘driving in a criminally negligent manner,’ WCVB reported.
How was non English speaking Chinese driver able to obtain commercial license and operate vehicle???
According to a Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration compliance snapshot, E&P Transportation was rated as ‘satisfactory,’ with only one crash in the past 24 months. The company, based in Kings Mountain, North Carolina, has four vehicles and employs 11 drivers.
In a post on X, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy wrote that Dong had received his commercial driver’s license from New York State in 2024. According to Duffy, Dong is a naturalized U.S. citizen from China who did not speak English.
‘Unacceptable. This is exactly why we are holding states accountable, enforcing the rules of the road and cracking down on drivers who can’t speak English,’ Duffy wrote. ‘If you can’t be properly trained, read our road signs or communicate with law enforcement, you have no business driving a bus.’
Family remembered in GoFundme
Ecaterina and Dmitri had immigrated from Moldova to the United States in 2008 and settled in Greenfield, where they were faithful members of the Greenfield Russian Baptist Church according to social media.
A GoFundMe set up on behalf of the family as of Sunday afternoon had raised $63,585.
