Metro has fired two Metrobus drivers, one who was accused of kidnapping a rider and one who was arrested for driving with a suspended license.
The transit agency saved the job of a third who was wrongly accused of making a personal cell phone call while behind the wheel.
Metro is making good on its new zero-tolerance policy for bus drivers and Metrorail operators caught using a cell phone or texting while operating a vehicle. The policy was introduced July 9, 17 days after a speeding Red Line train rear-ended an idle train, killing nine and injuring at least 70.
A Metrobus operator who refused to allow a customer to exit a bus after a verbal dispute July 25 in Prince George’s County was fired, Metro said. The operator, 41-year-old Michael E. Robinson, of Capitol Heights, was arrested by Metro Transit Police and charged with felony kidnapping. He had been on the job since 2007.
Another bus driver was arrested July 30, this time for driving on a suspended license after a collision between her bus and a car at Good Hope Road and 25th Street in Southeast D.C. The driver of the car was cited for failing to yield the right of way, but the investigation revealed that the bus driver, Carletta S. Douglas, had lost her commercial driver’s license two months earlier.
The bus driver whose job was spared was photographed by a rider using her cell phone while behind the wheel near the Georgia Avenue-Petworth Metro Station. But the investigation revealed she made a phone call to report a mechanical problem with the bus. The driver was “re-instructed regarding operating procedures and returned to service,” the transit system said.
The operator of the Red Line train in the June 22 crash, Jeanice McMillan, was not using her phone at the time of the collision, federal investigators learned soon after the incident. But shaken commuters were spurred nevertheless to pay closer attention — often with their cameras — to the people behind the wheel of the bus or at the controls of the train.
