Former RTD Driver Fined in Fatal Freeway Accident

An RTD driver whose bus overturned on the Hollywood Freeway last summer was fined and ordered to do community service at an institute for the blind after pleading no contest Tuesday to a vehicular manslaughter charge stemming from the death of a passenger.

Shirley Jean Riojas, 26, of Santa Monica, who could have faced a maximum penalty of one year in jail, entered her plea as her trial was about to begin before Los Angeles Municipal Court Commissioner Robert Sandoval.

Riojas, fired after the July 31 accident, was ordered to pay $850 in fines and penalties and to work eight hours weekly for eight months at the Braille Institute, where Lois K. Wilbon, the passenger who died as a result of the accident, had served as a volunteer.

Deputy City Atty. Mitchell Fox, who prosecuted the case, suggested the community service at the Braille Institute and Riojas readily agreed, according to defense attorney Daniel V. Behesnilian.

“We thought it was a brilliant idea,” Behesnilian said. “Shirley feels doing community work at the place where the deceased was so popular and loved is her way of trying to give back the love that Ms. Wilbon gave to her students.”

Riojas, who had begun working as a trainee driver six weeks before the accident, was initially charged with making an unsafe lane change. The complaint was amended to include manslaughter after a CHP report showed that the accident contributed to Mrs. Wilbon’s death. Mrs. Wilbon, 67, of Tarzana, who had part of a leg amputated after the accident, died at a Panorama City hospital Sept. 15.

In all, 27 passengers were injured in the accident, which occurred when Riojas belatedly attempted to steer her bus into a passenger loading turnout near Vermont Avenue.

RTD officials said they fired Riojas after she tested positive for drugs. But the city attorney’s office has said there was no evidence that she was using drugs at the time of the accident.

Reference to Record

“We did not feel jail time was appropriate in this instance because she did have a clean record,” Deputy City Atty. Ellen Sarmiento explained. In addition to the fines, penalties and community service, Riojas also was sentenced to three years of unsupervised probation.

Behesnilian said Riojas has been unemployed since the accident and has filed a $10-million wrongful termination suit against the RTD.

A second RTD driver, Cathy Stanley Miles, 38, faces trial May 15 on a charge of vehicular manslaughter in connection with a September, 1986, hit-and-run accident in which a 50-year-old pedestrian died.