The mayor of an Alaska town and her mother, who were in town for a tour of the White House, are dead after they were struck by a tour bus in D.C. Wednesday night.

WASHINGTON — The mayor of an Alaska town and her mother, who were in D.C. for a tour of the White House, were struck and killed by a tour bus Wednesday night.

Skagway, Alaska, native and Mayor Monica Adams Carlson, 61, and 85-year-old Cora Louise Adams of Elbe, Washington, were in the crosswalk on the intersection of Pennsylvania Avenue and 7th Street Northwest when they were struck by a 2013 Prevost H3 passenger bus shortly after 9:30 p.m.

D.C. police said they believe the bus was traveling northbound on 7th Street Northwest and made a left turn onto Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest when it struck the mother and daughter.

The women were taken to a hospital with life-threatening injuries where they died.

Police have not identified the driver of the tour bus or if charges against the driver would be filed.

Carlson and her mother were in D.C. for a tour of the White House, set up through Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Ala., according to Steve Hites, president of Skagway Street Car Tour, where Carlson also worked.

Carlson, who had been elected in a write-in campaign in October 2017, had one more year in her term as mayor of Skagway and also served as the director of tour operations at Skagway Street Car Tour since 1996. She worked as a tour conductor for the company for several years before that, Hites told WTOP.

“She was very proud of her town and was a good mayor,” Hites said in an email.

Skagway is about 100 miles north of Juneau, Alaska’s capital.

Below is a map where the two women were struck by the bus:

(WTOP’s Anna Isaacs, Megan Cloherty and Jack Moore contributed to this report.)

Like WTOP on Facebook and follow @WTOP on Twitter to engage in conversation about this article and others.

© 2018 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.</s>ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Residents of a tiny Alaska town are grieving the death of their mayor, who was fatally struck by a bus with her elderly mother during a visit to Washington, D.C.

Metropolitan police say 61-year-old Skagway Mayor Monica Carlson and her 85-year-old mother, Cora Adams of Elbe, Washington, died at a hospital after the Wednesday night crash near the National Mall.

Police say the bus struck the women in a crosswalk as the vehicle made a left hand turn. Police spokeswoman Brianna Jordan says the crash is still under investigation.

Blaine Mero, office administrator for the Skagway Chamber of Commerce, says locals in the town of about 1,000 are in shock and grief over the news.

He says Carlson was elected to a 2-year term as a write-in candidate in 2017.</s>The mayor of an Alaskan town and her elderly mother were killed after they were struck by a tour bus near the National Mall in downtown D.C. Wednesday night, police say.

The crash happened just before 10 p.m. near the National Archives building at 700 Pennsylvania Avenue NW. The Eyre bus was making a left turn onto Pennsylvania Avenue when it struck Monica Adams Carlson and her mother, 85-year-old Cora Louise Adams, as they were in the crosswalk, the Metropolitan Police Department said.

Both women were taken to the hospital, where they died of their injuries.

Carlson, 61, was the mayor of Skagway, Alaska, a town about 100 miles north of Juneau with a population of about 1,100 people. Carlson was a write-in candidate who was elected to a 2-year term in 2017, according to the town's radio station KHNS-FM.

Carlson's mother was a resident of the lakeside town of Elbe in Washington state.

Video from Wednesday's scene showed a tour bus parked on the street near a large area that was taped off by police.

Several police cruisers had their lights on and officers could be seen stepping inside the bus.

No further information about the crash has been released.

Eyre Bus, Tour & Travel, the company that operates the tour bus, released a statement expressing their sympathy to the family.

"We are cooperating fully with authorities in the investigation of this incident. Eyre places the safe transportation of our customers as well as those we share the road with as our number one priority." the statement went on to say.

It's not clear whether the traffic lights were red or green at the time. Police are reviewing traffic camera video, and the driver of the bus is cooperating with their investigation.

Blaine Mero, office administrator for the Skagway Chamber of Commerce, says locals are in shock and grief over the news.

Police say the crash was very similar to an incident that claimed the lives of two woman on Feb. 14, 2007. The woman were hit and killed by a Metrobus in the same intersection. Metro settled a lawsuit with one of the victim's husbands for more than $2 million. DDOT added a left-turn lane and left-turn arrow to the intersection following the crash.

The Associated Press contributed to this report</s>On Wednesday night, the mayor of Skagway and her mother were struck by a bus and killed in Washington, D.C. The D.C. Metropolitan Police say 61-year-old Monica Adams Carlson of Skagway, and 85-year-old Cora Louise Adams of Washington state were struck in a crosswalk near the National Mall.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.</s>Two pedestrians who were struck by a tour bus in downtown Washington have died.

D.C. police said Thursday morning that the victims “succumbed to their injuries.” They were struck around 9:30 p.m. Wednesday at Seventh Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW.

They were taken to a hospital with injuries that police had said were life-threatening.

The crash is under investigation. The tour bus, which had the company name Eyre Bus, Tour, Travel on the side, was parked Wednesday night in the 700 block of Pennsylvania Avenue near the Navy Memorial and across the street from the National Archives.</s>The District is combating an increased rat infestation.

While President Donald Trump is busy calling people “rats” on Twitter, it looks like literal rats are running onto the White House lawn. For years, Washington, D.C., has dealt with a plague of the four-legged rodents, and they are not discerning about where they show up. Big fancy house painted white? Yes, they go there.

According to a report from the Washington Post, on Monday, one of the creatures scurried across the lawn at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and not surprisingly, somebody was there to report on the crazy scene.

Reporter John Roberts took to Twitter to share the scene with his followers. He wrote, “I am standing in our @FoxNews standup location on the @WhiteHouse North Lawn and notice in my peripheral vision something moving at my left foot. I assumed it was one of the ubiquitous WH squirrels. But no… it was a big brown rat.”

A rat is a far less welcome sight than a squirrel, and not what a reporter would hope to see reporting on location at the White House. However, given the liberal use of the term recently by the president of the United States, perhaps the D.C. contingent of the rodents feels emboldened to go even further than they have ever gone before.

It seems that rats are the great equalizer in the District and very likely the world. According to D.C. rat specialist Gerard Brown, who is a program manager at the Department of Health, revealed a shocking fact. He said, “Every human in D.C. comes within five feet of a rat every single day. They just may not always know it.”

Unfortunately, the U.S. capitol experienced what Brown called a “perfect storm” of flushing rats out in recent weeks. Three factors cause rats to go on the move, and they are food sources, weather, and population density, which D.C. has had in spades lately.

The good news is that in a few short weeks, on January 1, an additional $906,000 will flood the city with increased measures to combat its rat problem. It may seem crazy, but in 2017, the city received 5,310 calls about rats on its 311 line, and officials believe that 2018 calls remain at a similar level. The number jumped a shocking 50 percent from 2016 levels.

So far, the White House itself hasn’t experienced an infestation the way the rest of the city has, though. National Park Service spokeswoman Jenny Anzelmo-Sarles said, “We haven’t seen a change, or a need for immediate concern, around the White House.”

The National Park Service maintains both the house grounds and Lafayette Square Park.

As for other so-called rats in D.C.? Well, they’re a completely different type of issue.
The Mayor of Skagway, Alaska, Monica Carlson, as well as her mother, are killed after being struck by a tour bus in Washington, D.C. while preparing to visit the White House.