Police in Washington, D.C., have arrested a Baltimore man who was driving a tour bus when it struck and killed two tourists who were visiting from Alaska and Washington state, according to a statement issued Thursday.
Gerard Derrick James, 45, was charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter for the Dec. 19 incident near the National Mall, the Metropolitan Police Department said in a statement.
The two victims, 61-year-old Monica Adams Carlson and 85-year-old Cora Louise Adams of Elbe, Wash., were on vacation in the city. Carlson was mayor of Skagway, Alaska, a town of 1,100 residents. Adams operated a hamburger stand for tourists and hikers at Mount Rainier in northwest Washington state.
A Metrobus driver, Victor Kolako, got a year in prison after he hit two women at the same intersection in 2007. Following the incident, traffic officials changed the crosswalk signal settings to give pedestrians an early start to crossing.
Court documents filed Thursday indicate James, who worked for Maryland-based company Eyre Bus, Tour & Travel, was using a cell phone at the time of the crash and dragged one of the victims 183 feet past the intersection before he stopped the bus, according to the Washington Post.
D.C. police said the cell phone evidence was a “gross deviation” from proper driving and “created an extreme risk of death or serious bodily injury.”
The 85-year-old mother and 61-year-old daughter had been crossing Pennsylvania Avenue NW from the north side of 7th Street NW to the south side around 9:40 p.m. last Wednesday when the bus hit them.
The 2013 Provost H3 passenger bus was making a left-hand turn. Video footage from two cameras on the bus showed James had been talking with the phone raised to his head. A lawyer for the bus company turned over the evidence to police.
Upon arriving at the intersection and waiting to turn, he had put the phone down with the same hand. The phone rang, and he picked it up with his left hand, then switched to his right hand as he hit the accelerator and made the left turn, according to court documents.
James told police he had not seen either of the women in the crosswalk and stopped when he heard the impact.
The bus stopped more than 180 feet past the intersection.
Both victims were treated at the scene and taken to different hospitals. They both died shortly after arriving at the hospitals, within one minute of each other.
Hours earlier, the two had toured the White House Christmas decorations. They also paid tribute at Arlington National Cemetery to their son and grandson, a Marine who had served in Afghanistan.
Police said the lighting at the intersection was fine and the bus had its lights on at the time of the crash.
James, who passed a drug and alcohol test following the incident, did not have any traffic violations on his record.
A Superior Court judge in Washington, D.C., ordered on Thursday James be released until a preliminary hearing Feb. 15.
The two people killed in 2007 were local residents who had been leaving work at the Federal Trade Commission when they were fatally struck by a Metrobus. The bus driver pleaded guilty to two counts of negligent homicide and was sentenced to six months in jail and three years of supervised release.
Metro also paid $2.3 million to one of the victim’s husbands.
To date, 35 people have died in traffic-related incidents in the District this year. Fourteen of those 35 deaths were of pedestrians.
