Given just a few more minutes last Friday night, the party bus carrying Natasha Noland and fellow passengers home to Santa Cruz would have encountered the notorious, mountainous turns of Highway 17. Their churning stomachs might have persuaded them, after a night of drinking and partying, to shut up and sit down. We'll never know.
Instead, a fight broke out between the 25-year-old Noland and a 20-year-old woman, according to the California Highway Patrol. They somehow toppled out of the door of the moving bus. Noland died. The other survived. CHP investigators said they had a hard time questioning the passengers, because everyone except the driver was drunk.
"It was so chaotic out there," Officer D.J. Sarabia said. "Everyone is shaking their head and saying, 'What happened?' "
Four days later, authorities are still piecing together the full story from fellow riders and are trying to nail down exactly what happened. And now, the tragedy has focused wider attention on the world of party buses and the range of passengers, drinking, partying and other activities that seem to happen onboard and out of sight.
"Booze cruises, a party on wheels," is how state Assemblyman Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, describes them. He's authored a bill to rein in the party bus companies and make them assume responsibility for their passengers, including minors drinking on board.
Party buses have become a growing fixture in the Bay Area, ferrying groups of teenagers and adults to nightclubs and bars in big-city hot spots and suburban, boutique downtowns. Some buses cater to bachelor or birthday parties while others bring together strangers for a pub crawl or ride to a concert.
Promoted as a safe way to party and travel without getting behind the wheel, the party buses recently have drawn criticism on two fronts -- for turning a blind eye to teenagers drinking on board and for dumping loads of rowdy, hard-drinking partygoers on specific nightclubs or suburban downtowns and neighborhoods that don't want them.
James Roberson, a promoter for Vice Ultra Lounge Night Club in Walnut Creek, said the party buses generally aren't welcome in town.
"We don't normally allow party buses to come, but when they do, our security manager gets on the bus," he said. "Our club is strictly 21 and up, and if our party bus security sees that people aren't 21 and up, they don't let them into the club."
In Campbell, residents have recently objected to the growing rowdiness in their new downtown and blamed party buses for part of the problem. However, city police can't say how much bad behavior or crime can be traced to the buses without a formal study.
"We don't experience a lot of problems with the party buses," said Capt. Charley Adams. "On one hand, you wouldn't want a lot of people drinking and driving."
Today's party bus has evolved from the "prom limousine" of the 1980s, when mischievous teens found ways to rent the stretched-out luxury cars and drink liquor undetected behind dark, tinted windows. Finally catching on, the state stiffened the rules on limousine companies but left the buses alone. The latest phenomenon in mobile partying had not yet taken off.
But it was at full throttle two years ago when teenager Brett Studebaker was killed in a car crash after leaving a party bus on Highway 101 near San Mateo after a night of heavy drinking. His death prompted Assemblyman Hill to close the loopholes between party buses and limousines.
His "Studebaker Law" would require party bus companies and their drivers to assume responsibility for their passengers, ensuring that minors do not drink onboard or board the bus intoxicated. If minors are onboard, a chaperon age 25 or older must be on the bus to make sure they don't drink.
"These incidents caused me to say, why could these things be happening?" Hill said in a telephone interview Monday. "When these tragedies occurred a couple of years ago, what this new legislation hoped to do was to close that loophole and provide the same restrictions on buses as it does to limousines."
Although the Greater California Livery Association supports Hill's legislation, the largest party bus operator in the Bay Area does not.
"He's flat-out wrong to put the burden on the company and not on the parents or the people who signed the contract," said Mike Lee, a co-owner ofPartybus.com , the largest party bus operator in the Bay Area.
While Hill's proposal is up for a vote soon, it wouldn't go into effect until next year.
Meanwhile, it is still unclear how many passengers were on the bus with Noland.
Officers seized the black, 1998 Ford bus and plan to contact the 12 to 15 people believed to have been onboard. Some of them fled the scene, Sarabia said. Officers suspect that several passengers were underage and had been drinking.
Two men were arrested, including Noland's boyfriend, Bryan Jeffrey Larson, 33, of Santa Cruz. He was arrested after he kicked an officer several times and kicked out the window of a patrol car, police said. Hunter John Richardson, 19, of Santa Cruz, was arrested on charges of public intoxication and obstructing officers.
The party bus owner, Jon Reno St. James LLC, has a license from the state Public Utilities Commission to carry up to 15 passengers.
In 2010, the company was fined $4,500 for a number of violations, including operating with a suspended license, failing to maintain workers' compensation insurance and test employees for illegal drugs, and for not keeping records of each trip. The lists should include the person hiring the bus, number of persons in the group, destination and at least one member of the traveling party. It is not known why the company's license was suspended in the first place. On Monday, the company's liability insurance was active.
Contact Joe Rodriguez at 408-920-5767. Also contributing to this article: Reporters Cathy Kelly and Jason Hoppin of the Santa Cruz Sentinel and Mercury News reporter Molly Vorwerck and news researcher Leigh Poitinger.
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