#9 - Melissa Burr
On August the 10th of 2021, a tragic accident occurred on the streets of London.
Just outside the Victoria railway station, two buses collided into one another.
According to updates on the case, the London police and transport authorities were investigating
the circumstances surrounding the crash, but no arrests have been made as of yet.
It appeared to have most likely been an accident.
Even so, it claimed the life of 32-year-old Melissa Burr, a resident of Rainham, in East
London.
Two others were wounded in the collision, though their injuries were not life-threatening.
The authorities were closely examining the situation, trying to determine whether there
was any evidence of foul-play, or if there were any witnesses with information that could
prove valuable in their investigation.
In the meantime, Burr’s family mourned her passing with little in the way of definitive
answers or closure as to what prompted the event that took her life.
#8 - Adrian Richardson
On August the 8th of 2021 a 44-year old man named Adrian Richardson was shot and killed
on a public transit bus in Portland, Oregon.
The incident that preceded the shooting is thought to have been some sort of argument
between Richardson and 47-year old Wayne Thompson.
After shooting Richardson, Thompson fled the scene, leaving his victim for dead on the
bus.
Richardson was transported to a Portland hospital, but he eventually succumbed to his critical
injuries.
An arrest warrant was issued for Thompson, who remained on the run for three weeks.
On August the 28th, the police received a tip regarding his whereabouts from a citizen
who had seen him on the street.
He was arrested, without further incident, and charged with second-degree murder and
felon in possession of a firearm.
#7 - The NYC Subway Murders
On the night of February the 12th of 2021, a string of violent attacks and killings swept
the New York City subway system.
Two individuals, both thought to be homeless, were stabbed to death while sleeping on subway
train cars.
The murders were just two hours apart, and the police believe they were both perpetrated
by the same person.
A third killing was also attempted.
A homeless man was asleep on a subway exit stairwell when he was suddenly awoken by a
sharp pain in his back.
He had apparently been stabbed, much like the first two victims but, fortunately, he
was able to get help in time.
He was transported to a hospital and kept in stable condition.
No one was arrested in the immediate aftermath, but the NYPD had developed a theory that another
homeless person, most likely someone with serious mental health issues, was responsible
for the murders and the attack.
#6 - Jadranka Petrova
45-year old Jadranka Petrova was killed in a vehicle collision, involving a Toronto transit
bus, on August the 30th of 2011.
The bus rear-ended a crane truck, on the Don Valley Parkway, causing the truck to spin
out of control and crash into a guardrail.
Debris from the violent wreck also struck a third vehicle.
The accident took the life of Petrova and injured an additional 13 people.
Six of the passengers on the bus were taken to a nearby hospital with serious injuries
and another four suffered minor wounds.
An investigation was subsequently launched by the Toronto Transit Commission while marijuana
was discovered among the bus driver’s belongings, later that same day.
The driver, 51-year old William Ainsworth, was charged with criminal negligence causing
death and possession of an illegal substance.
#5 - Elin Krantz
27-year-old Elin Krantz of Gothenburg, Sweden, never made it home on September the 26th of
2010, after a night out on the town.
Her body was found, not far from her house, the following morning, beaten and abused.
Krantz and her friend had taken the Gothenburg tramway back home, after a night of clubbing
in the city.
Her friend’s stop came first and Krantz was alone for the rest of the ride.
As the train made its way closer to the young woman’s stop, a man approached her where
she sat.
He would later be identified as 23-year old Ephrem Yohannes, an Ethiopian immigrant staying
in Sweden on a residence permit.
Krantz simply tried ignoring him, but once her stop finally arrived, Yohannes followed
her off the tram.
She was never seen alive again and her body was discovered the next day, in the Biskopsgården
district of Gothenburg, where she lived.
Luckily for the police, CCTV footage would provide abundant information on the case.
They were quickly able to identify the victim’s stalker and Yohannes was arrested just two
days after the incident.
A plainclothes officer spotted him at the very train station he’d first encountered
Krantz.
It was an open and shut case.
Kranz’s DNA was found on his clothes, and his DNA was found on her dead body.
He was sent to prison for 16 years and, upon his release, he will be deported back to Ethiopia.
#4 - Zoey Hughes and Alayasia Thurston
At 12:20 am, on May the 18th of 2021, a party bus carried a rowdy group of young people
through the streets of Oakland, California.
The revelers were celebrating one of the passengers’ 21st birthday.
Their night of fun and excitement quickly turned tragic when a car, carrying at least
two gunmen, pulled up next to the bus.
The still-unidentified perpetrators opened fire, hitting multiple victims.
Two of those victims were 16-year-old Zoey Hughes and 19-year-old Alayasia Thurston,
both of whom passed away.
Five more people on the bus suffered non-fatal gunshot wounds.
While the Oakland police have yet to make any arrests related to the attack, they do
believe the shooting was targeted, and they’ve offered a $40,000 reward to anyone with information
that might lead to the gunmen’s capture.
The abrupt deaths of Hughes and Thurston could’ve been avoided if the driver of the bus had
adhered to the rules and regulations related to operating a party bus.
The legal age to climb onboard such a vehicle is 21, so neither Zoey nor Alayasia met the
minimum requirement to get on that bus in the first place.
#3 - Cathy Algarin
The body of 41-year-old Cathy Algarin, of San Antonio, Texas was found in her apartment
on April the 7th of 2020.
The mother-of-three had been stabbed to death inside her home.
The police named her boyfriend, Ramon Villagomez, aged 31, as the prime suspect in her murder.
With the authorities in pursuit, an armed Villagomez boarded a rapid transit bus in
Dallas, on April the 19th, with plans to hijack it.
He forced the driver to lead the pursuing officers on a chase.
When transportation officials attempted to stop the bus, Villagomez fired multiple rounds
at them, hitting one officer in the leg.
The ensuing chase led police through multiple cities before the bus ultimately drove over
a set of spike strips and was finally neutralized.
Villagomez emerged from the bus with his firearm in hand and was subsequently shot by police
officers.
He later died at the hospital.
With Villagomez dead, the authorities feared they might never officially solve Cathy Algarin’s
murder.
Today's topic was requested by Stephany Duarte, Trey Kearney, and Shannon Hammell.
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#2 - Isaac Caldwell, Frankye Duckett, and Marcus Parks
In recent years, the city of Baltimore, Maryland, has experienced a series of murders involving
public transport workers.
One such incident occurred in October when a Maryland Transit Administration bus driver,
named Marcus Parks, was shot and killed after arguing with a man attempting to board the
bus.
The specific details surrounding their disagreement were not reported, but Parks’ senseless
death was only the beginning.
Three months later, on January the 29th of 2021, a mobility van driver named Frankye
Duckett was murdered by a man trying to get in the vehicle without a face mask.
Current Maryland pandemic regulations stipulate that all passengers must wear a mask while
using public transportation.
Duckett was simply following the rules of his workplace and he was killed for it.
The latest incident took place on August the 21st of 2021.
Isaac Caldwell drove a paratransit bus for the city of Baltimore.
He was waiting to board a bus himself, in order to get to work, when he was recognized
as a public worker and shot dead.
The police have yet to name a suspect in Caldwell’s killing but his death continues a disturbing
pattern of violence against the city’s public transit employees.
Authorities believe it might be related to frustration with heightened safety regulations
such as mask mandates.
In light of the latest occurrences, Baltimore’s transportation workers are on high alert.
#1 - The Santa Clara Rail Yard Shooting
Police were called to a Santa Clara Valley rail yard station, in northern California,
on the morning of May the 26th of 2021, after receiving multiple reports of an active shooter
on the premises.
By the time they arrived at the scene, 10 rail yard workers had been shot, 9 of them
to a fatal degree, by a man who subsequently took his own life.
The killer was identified as fellow Santa Clara public transit employee Samuel Cassidy.
He’d entered the station at about 6:30 am and proceeded to open fire on many of his
co-workers.
The victims were spread across two buildings in the rail yard.
The police later found suspicious material in Cassidy’s locker, and the bomb squad
was brought in to inspect it.
The contents of his locker were revealed to be raw materials commonly used to construct
explosive devices.
At the same time as police had rushed to respond to the gunfire reports, firefighters had been
called to a house fire, 10 miles from the rail yard.
It was later identified as Samuel Cassidy’s residence.
Authorities believe his plan was for the house fire to serve as a diversion while he went
to the rail yard to carry out his attack.
He didn’t expect the police response to be so prompt and, in his panic, decided to
end his life rather than face the consequences of his actions.
Thanks for watching!
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on a subway that uses passenger pushers to cram everyone in?
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