LAS VEGAS >> A crash that toppled a school bus on its side today in Las Vegas killed the driver of another vehicle and injured at least 16 children, including a young passenger in the car who was in critical condition, authorities said.

The bus was carrying 48 students to Bailey Middle School when the vehicles collided at an intersection and sent the bus careening into a vacant lot, Clark County school police Capt. Ken Young said. It was not immediately clear what led to the wreck, police said.

Cristina Marquez said her son, Angelo Marquez, 13, called her after the crash, telling her that kids went flying from their seats as the bus tipped on its side.

“He was upset. He keeps talking about one girl who had her hand through a window, slit her wrist,” Marquez told The Associated Press. “One of his friends had a neck injury.”

The teen said he also saw someone got a cut near their eye.

“I was scared and all I could think was to close my eyes,” Angelo Marquez said.

The front half of a white sedan was completely demolished, and the bus lay on its side after swerving through a chain-link fence into a dirt lot nearby.

Fourteen injured children, ages 11 to 16, were taken to University Medical Center, hospital spokeswoman Danita Cohen said. Thirteen were bus passengers, and the other was riding in the car and suffered life-threatening injuries, police and hospital officials said.

A boy and a girl from the bus were treated and released from another hospital.

The female bus driver was evaluated, Cohen said. She was not immediately counted among the injured.

An aerial view from a KSNV-TV news helicopter showed the full-sized yellow bus on its side with its stop lights flashing and two roof escape hatches open while police investigated the cause of the crash.

Officials set up triage treatment areas under color-coded sun shades in a vacant lot, and Jones said uninjured children were being reunited with parents in a nearby hardware store parking lot.

Cristina Marquez said some children were distraught but most were calm, helping each other and the bus driver out of the tipped-over vehicle. She said her son had cuts and scratches.

She said turnover among drivers was high on the route to school, and the woman driving the bus Thursday had been on the route for a few months.