A Bus Crashed in Randolph Last Night After a Passenger Punched the Driver
16 people ended up in the hospital, including the driver.
Photo via iStock.com/Kali9
An angry passenger allegedly punched a Brockton bus driver behind the wheel Monday night, causing the vehicle to crash into a car and a telephone pole and sending 16 people to the hospital.
According to a statement from the Randolph police department, the crash was reported around 7:15 p.m. Through an initial investigation, police found that Matthew Young, a 24-year-old Boston resident, had assaulted the bus’s 48-year-0ld driver after his request that the bus make a special stop was denied. Like Boston’s city buses, Brockton Area Transit buses follow fixed routes with assigned stops where passengers can get off.
The bus driver reportedly blacked out during the attack, causing him to to rear-end a car and crash into a telephone pole. 16 people—including the bus driver, two women who were in the car the bus hit, and a 10-year-old bus passenger—were taken to hospitals with non-life-threatening injuries. Authorities have ruled the crash a “mass casualty incident” due to the high number of people injured.
“When the bus driver got off his head was split open,” a woman who lives across the street from where the incident occurred told WBZ. “They were scared, he started attacking the bus driver and the bus driver just lost control and when he hit the pole everybody just slid to the front, like propelled to the front of the bus.”
“This attack on the driver made for a very dangerous situation for riders on the bus and anyone traveling in the immediate area,” Randolph Police Chief William Pace says in a statement. “Officers on scene were able to take the suspect into custody quickly.”
Young was charged with wrongful interference of operation of vehicle carrying passengers for hire for a felony, assault and battery on a bus driver, and assault and battery resulting in serious bodily injury. He was arraigned in Quincy District Court Tuesday morning and ordered held without bail until his dangerousness hearing next Monday.
