A Camas woman will be reimbursed after her stroller was crushed by a C-Tran bus last week, the agency said Monday.
The stroller was empty when the incident happened Thursday. Amanda Keating was about to put her 2-year-old son Lucas in the stroller when it went off the curb and got caught under the back wheel of a Route 92 bus as it pulled away, she said.
“By the time I put my son down and turned around, the bus had already run over the front (of the stroller),” Keating said. The incident left her shaken, and left the stroller unusable.
“I’m really glad that my son wasn’t already in it,” she said.
Keating will be given $180 to replace the three-wheel stroller, which she had just received as a Christmas gift. She said she’d also like to see disciplinary action taken against the driver, who continued driving after the stroller had been caught under the bus.
But C-Tran has no plans to take any such action, said public affairs manager Jim Quintana. The agency has found no fault, and video surveillance footage doesn’t conclusively show what happened after Keating and her son stepped off the bus.
What it does show is that the incident, first reported by KATU-TV, appears to be an accident, Quintana said.
“There was no evidence on that DVR … that would indicate anything happened outside the bus,” he said. “When that driver drove off, he had no clue that something had happened.”
As for the $180 claim, the money will be paid through the Washington State Transit Insurance Pool, of which C-Tran is a member.
Keating called C-Tran to file a report almost immediately after the stroller was destroyed at Northwest Sixth Avenue and Northwest Logan Street in Camas, according to the report. The incident happened at 5:40 p.m. Thursday; Keating called C-Tran 20 minutes later.
Exactly how the stroller went off the sidewalk and under the bus is unclear. What’s not in dispute: The close call could have been worse.
