Terrell, Texas ? A chartered bus taking youngsters to a church camp crashed into a pillar under an overpass Monday, killing the driver and four passengers, authorities said.

Multiple injuries also were reported in the accident, which happened at about 9:20 a.m. along Interstate 20 about 30 miles east of Dallas. Video footage showed the bus wedged between the pillar and a grass embankment, its left side nearly sheared off, and debris scattered over a wide area.

The bus was one of two carrying middle and high school students to a camp in Ruston, La., said Erika Robinson, finance assistant with the Metro Church of Garland. Each bus carried about 50 students.

“There were bodies and blood and things everywhere,” said Todd Von Helms, a youth minister in another church group that was traveling on the highway to the same camp. “I asked our youths to turn their heads and not to look. It’s probably the worst thing I’ve ever witnessed.”

The cause of the crash wasn’t immediately determined, said state Department of Public Safety Cpl. Joe Applewhite. Some bus passengers told officials that the bus began to swerve before the impact.

Early reports from the scene indicated six people were dead, but the toll was reduced to five, said Tom Vinger, DPS spokesman in Austin. The sixth person believed to have been killed was in critical condition, he said.

Rescue workers swarmed over the scene, and as many as eight medical helicopters were sent.

The group left from the nondenominational church in the Dallas suburb of Garland about two hours before the crash.

“All of our pastors are headed out there. The rest of us are about to leave,” Robinson said.

Two of the injured were taken to Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, two went to Mother Frances Hospital in Tyler and an unknown number went to Methodist Hospital in Dallas, spokesmen said.

It was the latest in a number of multiple-fatality accidents this year on Interstate 20, a major east-west artery across Texas.

On June 10, a 35-year-old woman and four children were killed when their sport utility vehicle smashed into an 18-wheeler parked on the shoulder in Mesquite, a Dallas suburb.

The day before, three people were killed when a Greyhound bus slammed into the rear of tractor-trailer near Colorado City in West Texas.

In late March, five Abilene Christian University students from Nigeria were killed when their sport utility vehicle veered off the interstate west of Fort Worth.