PORTLAND, Oregon (Reuters) - Oregon authorities said on Tuesday they have managed to positively identify one of nine people killed Sunday morning after a charter bus skidded off an icy mountain highway and crashed down an embankment.
Identification of the victims has been complicated because some were foreign nationals, said Eugene Gray, forensic administrator for the Oregon State Medical Examiner's Office.
The Korean Consulate in Seattle, Wash. sent a team to work with investigators, since many of the 47 people on the bus were of Korean origin and citizens of Korea.
Some other passengers were Canadian and others were from the United States.
"We do positive identifications with fingerprints, dental records and DNA," Gray told Reuters. "None of this is available to us. We don't know how long it will take. We have to wait until we're provided the information."
The lone identification provided by authorities so far is that of Dale William Osborn, 57, from Spanaway, Washington, who was killed in the crash, officials said in a press release Tuesday.
His wife, 65 year-old Darlene Sue Osborn, was being treated at St. Anthony Hospital, Pendleton.
The Oregon State Police said on Tuesday that one of the people killed in the crash may be a juvenile female. Of the nine people killed, four are male and five are female.
The tour bus veered off an icy highway on Sunday morning, crashed through a guardrail and plunged 200 feet down an embankment, killing nine and injuring most of the other 38 people on board.
The injured were taken to 10 hospitals in three states and at least nine remained hospitalized on Tuesday.
Of the 26 people transported to St. Anthony Hospital in Pendleton, Oregon, five of the most severely injured were stabilized and transported to hospitals better equipped to treat them.
Tuesday, St. Anthony had five patients remaining, all in fair condition, said Larry Blanc, director of communications.
Four of the patients transferred to Oregon Health & Science University Hospital in Portland remained there on Tuesday, a spokeswoman said.
Oregon State Police and the National Transportation Safety Board are combing through evidence and interviewing passengers and the driver to try to determine the cause of the crash.
(Editing by Dan Whitcomb and David Gregorio)
