TAMPA, Fla. — The man accused of stabbing and killing a Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority (HART) bus driver in 2019 is now going to trial.
Jury selection began Monday in the trial of Justin Ryan McGriff, who's charged with first-degree murder.
Tampa police said McGriff, who was 35 at the time, boarded a HART bus just after 4 p.m. on May 18, 2019, with a weapon concealed in his right hand. According to an arrest affidavit, McGriff told driver Thomas Dunn, "God bless you" twice before slitting his throat.
Witnesses told investigators there was no apparent provocation before the attack.
The death penalty is no longer on the table for McGriff after The Hillsborough County State Attorney’s Office in 2020 said it learned of evidence of his mental illness.
“This awful attack on a public servant shocked us all, and our office remains focused on obtaining justice for the victim’s family through a murder conviction,” a spokesperson for the state attorney's office said at the time.
In 2019, McGriff was found incompetent to stand trial and sent to a state hospital, where doctors worked to restore his competency.
After Dunn's death, both HART and the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority (PSTA) installed safety barriers on their buses in an effort to protect drivers.
The custom-fit protective barriers have extended tempered glass shields that cover the drivers' space. Signs on the shields warn passengers that assaulting a driver is a crime.
HART also upgraded its surveillance camera systems, armed the security guards at transit stations, and had its drivers do de-escalation training with Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office.
10 Investigates found that attacks on bus drivers in Hillsborough County spiked the year Dunn was killed, with nearly 500 bus drivers between 2017 and 2019 reporting they had been physically or verbally attacked by passengers.