TAMPA, Fla. — Passengers who ride the same bus route where a HART driver was stabbed to death Saturday were back on the bus Monday.
Many of them were saddened and angry to hear what happened and weren’t shy about sharing what they think needs to be done to better protect the drivers - and themselves.
“It shocked me,” said passenger Bessie Hall. “I couldn’t believe how someone could be so cruel.”
Hall says she takes the same bus into downtown Tampa three or four times a week.
It could have just as easily been her injured or killed this past weekend she said.
"Because you never know what’s going to happen nowadays in our world,” said Hall.
Saturday’s deadly attack has some passengers on edge.
A woman was clenching her pepper spray during her entire ride down Nebraska Avenue. Another said it would be a bad day for anyone to try anything suspicious.
“There are a bunch of people,” said passenger Fets McCray. “So, if somebody is trying to act up he’s gonna get his ass whooped after what just happened. So, yeah, I feel safe.”
The driver on Monday’s southbound route said he wasn’t allowed to comment to the media. But when a passenger asked him how he was doing, his answer was, “Surviving.”
The driver’s seats are surrounded by cameras and communication devices. There’s a panic button. And HART has promised to step up backup efforts.
On Sunday, HART’s head of safety and security Tom Malloy said, “Not only do we have security forces, but our transit supervisors are out throughout the entire system as well.”
“I would have a security guard with a gun on this route especially,” said passenger Brenda Pierce.
Pierce says on this ride, and those before this weekend’s attack, she’s rarely if ever seen added security.
And there’s enough unruly behavior, in her opinion, to warrant it.
“This situation here makes people scared. A person like me, scared to really catch the bus,” said Pierce. “And I’m not scared of nothing.”
Some of the passengers also suggested it’s time drivers had some sort of protective booth around them, similar to barriers installed in city buses in other cities.
“Something around them that’s bulletproof, you know, just something where no one can get to them,” said passenger Sherry Brown.
HART officials say they’ll be looking again into a safety partition. But when they’ve considered the idea in the past, it didn’t go over well with drivers.
“In the past, some of the operators got a little bit confined by that. That they were boxed in and they didn’t feel comfortable, and almost created an additional hazard,” said Malloy. “But in light of this horrible tragedy we need to take a deeper look and we need to have a 360-degree view of how we keep that safety and security.”
HART officials say they want to hold a statewide conference soon to talk with other mass transit organizations and find out what’s working for them when it comes to safety as well as what doesn’t.
If they asked passengers what they think, they might also get an earful.
“I ain’t scared to tell them how I feel,” said Pierce. “Because ... it’s not right.”
Several passengers also praised the driver killed on Saturday for his effort to pull the bus over safely even after he’d been attacked.
Editor's note: 10News is not naming the driver at the request of his family and HART.
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