27 Injured as RTD Bus Overturns on Freeway

Nearly 30 people were injured Thursday afternoon when a Southern California Rapid Transit District bus with a rookie driver at the wheel struck a curb on the northbound Hollywood Freeway and overturned, blocking all four lanes.

Twenty-seven people on the bus were treated at the scene by Los Angeles City Fire Department paramedics, and 21 of them went to hospitals, including the driver. Five were reported in serious condition.

Some of the passengers managed to escape through roof vents and an emergency window. Some of them told of screams and panic and of people “flying around” inside the bus as it toppled and then skidded along the freeway.

The accident was one of three collisions Thursday involving RTD buses. The 3:40 p.m. crash at Western Avenue brought traffic to a halt for miles and jammed Hollywood area streets as California Highway Patrol officers diverted motorists.

The northbound freeway remained closed until the wrecked bus was righted and towed away more than four hours later.

RTD spokesmen said driver Shirley Jean Riojas, 26, who was hired June 23 and was being broken in on a new route by veteran driver Raul Lewenberg, was en route from downtown Los Angeles to Northridge with 31 passengers when she apparently tried too late to turn into the loading turnout near the Western Avenue bridge.

The tires of the bus struck the curb on the right-hand side of the turnout lane, and the bus hurtled across the island, sliding on its right side until it came to rest across the entire northbound freeway 150 feet away, where it smashed the center divider fence.

California Highway Patrol Officer Mike Maas said the driver was in the No. 4 lane and decided too late to exit at the bus ramp. “She was traveling too fast when she made that decision,” Maas said. “Not too fast in general--just too fast to exit.”

He added, “I don’t know how she missed people (in other cars), because it was bumper-to-bumper out there.”

CHP Officer Jill Angel said Riojas was given routine alcohol and drug screening, which showed that she was not under the influence of either.

“This was only my second time on the route,” Riojas said. “I don’t know every stop perfectly.” She said she could not help thinking that her instructor was “sitting there with my grade sheet and may grade me for missing the stop.”

She said she thought she was going about 40 m.p.h.

Some passengers and witnesses said they thought the bus was going faster than that.

One motorist, Fran Jordan, said at the scene that the bus was “going really fast . . . too fast.” She said the bus “went over sideways and just slid right across the road.”

Bus passenger Ronnie Linthicum, 21, said the bus was traveling “awfully fast” and that when it began to swerve, the driver “never put on the brake. The bus was like it was on two wheels after it hit.”

Passenger Jeremy Evans, 15, of Studio City, agreed, saying: “She was speeding. I don’t know how fast, but she was definitely speeding.”

He said that when the bus turned over, his head struck the rim of a seat and “the next thing I remember, some guy was on top of me to climb out a window. . . .”

He added: “Everyone didn’t care about anyone else. People were stepping on top of each other to get out.”

Bus passenger Robert Valladares, 23, of Sunland, said that when the bus hit the curb, “I knew the bus wasn’t going to stay on its four wheels. I just hung onto my seat as tight as I could. . . . When I saw we were sliding, that’s when I closed my eyes. Everybody started flying around the bus.”

When he opened his eyes, Valladares said, “there was all this screaming.” He said he saw one woman passenger with her ankle “twisted around. . . . You could see it was broken. It was wild in there.”

And, he said: “There was this guy by the driver. I think he broke his back. He couldn’t move his legs. This lady lost about three front teeth and her face was all messed up, too.”

Valladares was only slightly injured and went home without hospital treatment.

Four of the injured were taken to Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, and two of them were reported in serious but critical condition.

At least three others were reported in serious condition.

Six were taken to Queen of Angels Hospital. Six were taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, one to Kaiser Foundation-Hollywood and four others to Glendale Memorial.

Earlier in the day, another RTD bus was involved in a collision with a car at 4th and Hill streets in downtown Los Angeles. RTD spokesman Mark Littman said the car broadsided the bus. Six people were taken to hospitals.

And at 9:23 p.m., the RTD had its third injury accident of the day when a bus and and two automobiles were involved in a collision at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Vermont Avenue.

Police said the bus, eastbound on Wilshire, was stopped at a traffic signal when a car, headed in the same direction at high speed crashed into another car stopped for the signal, knocking the second car into the side of the bus.

Three injured people were taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and the Hospital of the Good Samaritan. Other details were not immediately available.

Also contributing to this story were Times staff writers Nieson Himmel, Kai Ito, Jay Goldman and Ted Thackery Jr.