YORK COUNTY — The trucker who slammed into the back of a party bus on Interstate 64 in late 2022 — killing three young people from Hampton Roads — told investigators that the firm he worked for routinely falsified driving logs required under federal law.
Daniel Lee Cramer, 62, of Alabama, told federal investigators he would call the Chicago-area firm, Triton Logistics Inc. Then a company office in Lithuania would “electronically switch” his tractor-trailer to a fake “co-driver” — a man he never met — and Cramer would continue on his way as if he were the other driver.
With the switch, Cramer said, he would have a “fresh clock” to keep logging hours at the wheel.
Cramer asserted that this was done with Triton Logistics’ knowledge and at its direction. In fact, he said, company employees were the ones who told him exactly what to say when asking to be logged in and out.
Cramer said he logged himself back in as his truck’s driver less than two hours before he crashed into the back of the party bus as both vehicles traveled on I-64 eastbound through York County at 1:38 a.m. on Dec. 16, 2022.
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Three bus passengers killed
The bus and tractor-trailer got interlocked, and veered together off the left side of road into an embankment. The top came off the bus, and the bus driver and all 22 passengers — returning to Norfolk from a party in Richmond to celebrate a passenger’s music career — were ejected.
Three passengers were found dead at the scene: Montia Bouie, 19, of Chesapeake; X’Zavier Raquan Evans, 25, of Norfolk — whose fledgling career the group was celebrating — and Jontae Kaalib Russell, 21, also of Norfolk. All three were sitting at the very rear of the bus.
Twenty others were injured, eight of them seriously.
Cramer told police on the night of the crash that he “did not see any taillights,” and “drove up on the bus” in his 18-wheeler.
But video footage from the rig shows that the bus’ red taillights were in fact on and visible before the collision, according to the National Transportation Safety Board’s analysis. The report also said Cramer veered nine times outside his lane markings in the three minutes leading up to the crash.
In his May interview with investigators, Cramer said he saw the bus only “microseconds” before impact. “It was probably more than that, but you know, not enough to really react,” he said. “I did hit my brakes prior to impact, but not enough to change the outcome.”
Cramer — carrying a load of beer from St. Louis to a Chesapeake warehouse — denied falling asleep or feeling fatigued, according to the report from the National Transportation Safety Board. He told investigators he felt “100 percent,” having slept before getting on the road around midnight in his new 2022 Freightliner Cascadia.
Under federal rules, truckers can’t drive for more than 11 hours a day or 70 hours a week. They must take regular breaks. Nowadays, it’s all recorded on trucker’s tablets — “electronic logging devices” — rather than the old school paper log books.
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Bus was going only 20 mph
The bus’ driver, Antonio L. Wiggins, then 23, of Newport News, told the State Police that night that he was in the far-right lane of I-64 when he saw the truck advancing in his rear view mirror.
“I see a semi-truck approaching very fast,” Wiggins wrote in a statement. “I began to change lanes to get out of harm’s way. Then I hear a big bang. Next thing I know I was tumbling around the bus. I then find myself on the ground.”
The detailed federal analysis released in October said the black and green bus — “Futrell’s Party Bus” — was going only about 25 mph on I-64 four seconds before the crash. And the bus slowed to about 20 mph just before impact, according to the report, which used the truck’s dash cam to arrive at its calculations.
That’s far slower than the 40 mph originally estimated by the State Police.
Cramer’s rig, on the other hand, was traveling about 66 mph, slowing to 64 mph just before striking the back of the bus, the federal report said. The speed limit in the area, just west of the Colonial Parkway overpass on I-64, is 70 mph.
Why Wiggins was driving so slowly wasn’t clear. He told investigators he was mostly going more than 50 mph on the way home. But if it was slower, he said, “it would be because of wet conditions because I’m a cautious driver,” and “it was raining at the time.”
The State Police crash report said it was not raining, though it was misty and the roadway was wet.
In blood tests at the hospital that night, Cramer and Wiggins both tested negative for alcohol and other intoxicants. Neither driver has been charged in the crash.
“The Virginia State Police completed our investigation and turned it over to the York County Commonwealth’s Attorney for review and decisions on any charges,” State Police First Sgt. Eugene R. Desaulniers wrote in an email Friday.
The National Transportation Safety Board has compiled a series of reports and documents about the crash, including detailed speed analysis, transcripts of interviews with the trucker, bus driver and passengers and information about the trucker’s electronic logs. The 55 documents number 952 pages and counting.
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Non-existent “co-driver”
When State Police investigators interviewed Cramer immediately after the wreck, he told them he had a “co-driver” named Dwayne Sykes.
Cramer told police that he dropped Sykes off at a rest stop — a Pilot gas station — about an hour and a half before the accident, then began his driving shift.
But when investigators tracked down Sykes about a week later, he told a very different story. Sykes said he had worked for Triton — doing runs between Richmond and North Carolina — but was let go about a week before the accident because he no longer wanted to do long haul trucking.
“Mr. Sykes emphatically stated he had never been a co-driver with Mr. Cramer and did not even know the man,” according to the National Transportation Safety Board report.
When the NTSB interviewed Cramer in May 2023, he acknowledged he was driving alone the whole time.
A State Police search warrant affidavit filed shortly after the crash said there was evidence Cramer had “falsified log books by driving well outside his working duty time allowed.” WAVY-TV 10 first reported the story last week about the trucker’s May 23 assertions that Triton Logistics had spearheaded the scheme.
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Violations issued
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration — the agency authorized to enforce federal trucking rules — said Friday that it was still working on a response to a query from the Daily Press on the status of the investigation.
But the federal agency gave Triton a “conditional safety rating due to violations discovered,” according to a National Transportation Safety Board document.
The 16 violations include “submitting a false payroll document for a fictitious co-driver,” as well as “making or permitting a driver to make a false report regarding duty status,” and “requiring or permitting a (trucker) to drive more than 11 hours” in a day, among several others.
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Lawsuits pending
The allegations of doctored driving logs has also been raised in a series of eight lawsuits now pending in York-Poquoson Circuit Court. Rutter Mills LLP, a Norfolk law firm, has filed wrongful death lawsuits on behalf of Bouie’s and Russell’s estates, and personal injury lawsuits from six other passengers.
The eight suits — each seeking more than $10 million in damages — contend Cramer and Triton created fake driving logs to circumvent the federal rules.
“Defendants conspired, deceived and planned a course of action … to falsify driver logs to hide excess driving hours, fatigue and unsafe operations … to make more money at the expense of the public’s safety,” said the complaints, filed by Rutter Mills attorneys Adam Lotkin, Georgina Montgomery and Erik Porcaro.
Wiggins and the party bus’ owner, Towanda Futrell — a passenger injured in the crash — are also defendants in the litigation. Futrell, meantime, is suing Triton Logistics, Cramer and Wiggins in a $5 million lawsuit that’s pending in Newport News federal court.
At the time of the crash, NTSB records say, Wiggins did not have a commercial driver’s license — which are needed to carry more than 15 passengers. Moreover,his regular license was suspended for failing to carry insurance. Wiggins has told investigators that he didn’t know he needed a CDL and that he was never told his license was suspended.
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Trucking firm has no comment
An official at Triton Logistics who answered the phone at the company’s Illinois headquarters last week said the company won’t be speaking about the case while it’s still pending.
She referred a call to Triton’s Chicago lawyer, Jamie S. Lane, who did not return a phone call or email last week. Two lawyers at Sands Anderson — the Richmond firm defending Triton in the lawsuits — did not respond to emails seeking comment.
Cramer could not be reached at his home in Alabama, while his lawyer in Virginia Beach didn’t retun calls.
During his May 2023 interview with two National Transportation Safety Board investigators, the trucker said he had a commercial driver’s license for 16 years and had worked for Triton for about two years.
Before he was hired at Triton, Cramer said, the company ran advertisements offering “single drivers” the ability to “drive team miles.” Another company ad, he said, told truckers that they could “drive five to six thousand miles a week.”
“It’s not anything they are ashamed or embarrassed about,” Cramer told the investigators, according to the transcript posted on the NTSB’s website.
“These guys have hundreds and hundreds of trucks, thousands of trailers, every driver’s running the same program,” he said, saying the company’s large size helped to quash his suspicions. Other trucking companies in the Chicago area do the same thing, he asserted.
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Switching the logs
The way it worked, Cramer said, is that if he was getting close to his 11-hour daily driving limit — but sill felt fresh enough to keep driving — he would pull over at a way station or gas station. Then he would call the company’s offshore “log department” in Lithuania and tell them, “I need to switch my logs.”
“They say hold on for a second, and they’ll electronically switch the logs,” Cramer said.
He asserted that he simply “repeated what (Triton) told me to say” in such requests, which was “that I had just dropped off my co-driver and that, you know, he’s on the truck right now, but I’m driving.”
“They treat that as if it’s some sort of magic wand or that’s the verbiage to use,” Cramer said. “That’s what makes this work.”
Peter Dujardin, 757-897-2062, pdujardin@dailypress.com
