By O’Ryan Johnson
The Boston Herald
BOSTON — A fight over smoking on a T bus led to a bizarre crash yesterday afternoon that left a passerby pinned by his foot for nearly an hour under the behemoth public conveyance, transit police said.
MBTA Deputy Police Chief Joseph O’Connor said it all started about 3 p.m. when someone sparked up on the bus.
‘Initial reports tell us the operator approached a young male about smoking on the bus,’ O’Connor said. ‘At some point there was an assault on the bus operator.’
He said up to five men attacked the bus driver. He would not say whether weapons were used in the assault. He said the bus was not equipped with a video camera, and the suspects appear to have fled after the crash.
O’Connor said it took roughly 40 minutes to free the man, who emerged to cheers from the crowd. The freed man loudly thanked the firefighters, who used a jack to lift the bus. He waved to the crowd that gathered at Dudley and Hammond streets. He was taken to Boston Medical Center for an evaluation.
A teenager at the scene said he saw the crash, and ran to see whether he could help. ‘It crashed into the building,’ said Miguel Vasquez, 16, of Roxbury. ‘I saw smoke coming out of the bus... I tried helping people out of the bus. I forced the door. I pushed them open and I managed to get a couple people out.’
One of them was a 9-year-old girl who slammed her head on a fixture inside the bus, and was being treated by paramedics at the scene for her injuries. Vasquez said he next tried to free the man who was pinned.
‘I tried helping the victim out,’ Vasquez said. ‘To see if I could get his foot off the tire, but it was impossible.’
The driver was taken to Boston Medical Center with non-life-threatening injuries, but no one was seriously injured. No arrests have yet been made.
‘Right now we’re talking to a number of different witnesses,’ O’Connor said. ‘We’ll pull all the facts together and develop the case.’
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