In the last decade, 275 people were injured in metrobus accidents.
Another 11 people were injured in accidents involving Metro Access buses carrying people with disabilities, and six more were injured in accidents involving streetcars during the years the Metro’s owner operated them.
Pedestrians are particularly at risk in a collision with a 12-meter-long, 14-ton bus.
Here are the stories of four of them.
“I am grateful that I made it”
On October 12, 2017, Sally Gaynor was living “a kind of dream.”
She and her husband, Bob Gaynor, had sold the Price Hill home where they had raised their three children and moved into the Lytle Tower downtown.
“We lived large and enjoyed it,” she said.
Her life changed that October night as she was walking home from her Macy’s office at Seventh and Vine Streets. At the corner of Fifth and Main Streets, she was struck by a Metrobus, which trapped her under its carriage and hospitalized her for more than a month.
Her right leg was “skinned” from the hip to the ankle – the skin was peeled off. Her femur, pelvis and eleven ribs were broken. She has had to undergo nine operations since 2017.
And she and Bob moved into their own home in Patriot, Indiana, near the Ohio River.
Living in the city center is associated with too many triggers, says Gaynor, now 61.
“I used to think that when I heard a siren, someone had done something bad. Now, when I hear a siren, I think that someone needs to be rescued.”
Gaynor is not angry about what happened to her – people ask – but “so grateful that I made it through.” Her husband, children, friends, coworkers, emergency and hospital staff, and a stranger (whom Gaynor calls her guardian angel) who held her hand until she reached an ambulance helped her survive.
But Gaynor struggles with “mind games” during her recovery.
“It’s not in the rearview mirror. It will always play a big role in our lives, in all of our lives.”
A call was never returned
On January 11 of this year, John Kinney wondered why his usual 8 p.m. call to his mother went to voicemail.
Beverly Kinney’s husband thought something was wrong when she didn’t return from her afternoon walk on time.
When Jacob Kinney learned that afternoon that his grandmother had been hit and killed by a Metro bus, he called his parents in Connecticut and sobbed for five minutes.
“My call was never returned,” said John Kinney.
At 87, the retired teacher was still the energetic, dedicated and ever-active mother, wife and grandmother they knew.
She loved opera and Shakespeare. She was an avid hiker and cyclist. Her days and years were packed with volunteer and church commitments as well as with her family and friends.
After she and Ed Cloughessy married in 2007—both had lost their spouses the year before—they traveled to 27 countries on five continents. She planned an extended bicycle trip with son John. She stayed close to her son Jeff’s three children, who were growing up on the East Coast, by taking them on solo summer adventures.
As the family mourns her death, they remain angry that Metro continues to employ a driver with a bad reputation and want a wrongful death trial.
“I couldn’t understand how this man could drive this bus,” said Cloughessy, who is 85 and worked in human resources. “The bus company loaded the gun and he pulled the trigger.”
“Sister, I will be there”
Earlier this summer, on June 18, Don “Irie” Williams planned to return to Columbus to help his sister Regina Williams pack for the move.
He lived with her for four years, traveling frequently to Cincinnati to visit family, work cleaning jobs, and listen to reggae music.
“Sister, I’ll be there,” Williams, 59, told his sister.
That night, Williams walked up to a bus in Westwood, knocked on the window to get on, and slid off a curb as the bus started moving. As he fell into the street, he was struck and killed by the bus’s right rear wheels.
Regina Williams admits her brother was drinking and smoking marijuana. According to police and medical examiner reports, he was impaired at the time of his death. In a Metro video from the crime scene, he is seen unsteady on his feet.
That’s not how Williams’ 80-year-old mother and her large family want to remember the man whose nickname means “feeling good” in the Rastafarian language.
They will remember that he loved to dance and play with the children. That he earned his living by cleaning garages and basements. That the funeral was packed.
“He was a happy man who was at peace with everyone,” she said. “He wanted everyone to get along.”
“Every time I close my eyes, I see a bus”
On January 27, 2016, Stephen Frank had just returned to Cincinnati from Las Vegas and was setting up a new condo in Hyde Park.
Daughter Emily Frank spent the day with him – breakfast at Sugar n’ Spice in Paddock Hills, shopping for the condo, a stop for a new Ohio driver’s license, then dinner at Hyde Park Square.
Stephen Frank’s life ended that night and his daughter’s was forever changed when they were crossing the street at the corner of Erie Avenue and Edwards Road and were struck by a Metrobus. Stephen Frank, 73, died at the scene. Emily Frank’s left foot was permanently damaged.
“I used to be the girl with the cheese truck,” said Frank, now 50 and living in Pleasant Ridge. “Now I’m the girl who got hit by the bus.”
Frank, co-founder of the Cincinnati Food Truck Association, gave up her cheese truck after the accident and opened a cheese shop. She closed that two years ago and moved her catering business to a neighborhood cafe. Once she’s finished putting together her orders, she’s done for the day. “I can go home and rest,” she said.
The accident is constantly on her mind. Her right foot is a size 42, her left foot a size 44. She wears sneakers and compression stockings. She needs the distraction of the television to be able to fall asleep at night. She is in pain every day.
“Every time I close my eyes, I see a bus,” she said. “I don’t think it will ever go away.”
The Franks sued Metro and the driver who hit them. Metro paid her $1.9 million and her father’s estate $10 million to settle. The driver, Tyrone Patrick, who was throwing his Wendy’s chili cup into a trash can when he hit the Franks, had 39 previous accidents at Metro, their lawsuit says. He pleaded guilty to vehicular manslaughter, served three years probation and lost his job.
“We could have spent many more years with this man,” Frank said of her father. “This was an avoidable accident.”
