MTA Driver Sentenced for Hitting 79-Year-Old Passenger
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A Metropolitan Transportation Authority driver was sentenced Wednesday to six months in jail for attacking a 79-year-old passenger during an argument aboard a bus in Echo Park, prosecutors said.
Los Angeles Municipal Commissioner Kristi Lousteau also placed David Leon Smith of south Los Angeles on two years’ summary probation and ordered him to pay the victim’s medical expenses. The 47-year-old driver entered a no contest plea Tuesday to a charge of battery on a transit passenger.
Deputy City Atty. Dan Lowenthal said Smith hit the elderly man on both sides of his head--knocking a hearing aid out of his right ear and causing it to bleed--after the two men got into an argument Nov. 8 about why the driver hadn’t opened the bus doors until the passenger knocked on them.
After a male passenger on the bus intervened, Smith drove away. The injured passenger, whose name was withheld, was treated at Presbyterian Hospital.
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