NEW ORLEANS (CNN) -- At least 19 people were killed Sunday when a tour bus veered off an elevated interstate and flipped over the guardrail, Louisiana State Police said.

The mishap occurred on Interstate 610 at Wisner Boulevard, in the central part of the city.

"The accident occurred, apparently, near 9 a.m. this morning," New Orleans police spokesman Joe Narcisse said. "A police officer driving by saw the accident seconds after it happened, along with a number of citizens driving by. They all began to render assistance to passengers here on the bus."

Narcisse said initial reports showed that the bus left the roadway "for an unknown reason, crashed into the guard rail," then flipped over. He said emergency medical technicians pronounced nine people dead at the scene.

The Customs charter bus was en route from LaPlace, Louisiana, to Bay St. Louis on Mississippi's Gulf Coast, reportedly for a Mother's Day gambling outing.

The people on the bus were members of a club whose members go to the casino twice a month, said George Tassin, who said eight members of his family were on the bus.

Tassin's wife, daughter and an aunt were among the injured, he said as he waited outside the hospital where they were taken.

He said his aunt was making her first trip since the recent death of her husband.

"My aunt finally decided to go this one time and this happened," he said.

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