RANDOLPH, MASS. (WHDH) - A Boston man accused of repeatedly punching a bus driver in Randolph and causing a crash that sent 16 people to the hospital Monday night was ordered held without bail. The driver of that bus said all he could think about during the beating was protecting his passengers.
With a blackened eye and cuts on his face, Brockton Area Transit Authority bus driver Denis Pierre, 48, described the moment one of his passengers, 24-year-old Mathew Young, attacked him.
“He said to me, ‘If you don’t stop this bus, I am going to (expletive) you in your face,” Pierre said.
Young had been on his way to visit a friend in Randolph when he asked the driver to pull over.
“He stated that due to him not knowing the area he requested to get off the BAT bus on North Main Street,” Prosecutor Meredith Underwood read. “After multiple times requesting for the bus driver to stop the bus, he approached him and stated, ‘If you don’t stop the bus, I will punch you in the face.’”
Pierre reportedly told officers that he tried to explain to Young that he could not make unscheduled stops.
Young then punched the driver several times in the face, causing the driver to lose control and sending the bus careening into another car before coming to rest against a utility pole near the intersection of North Main and Grove Streets.
“I was focused on the road and that is why he got me so bad,” Pierre said. “I blacked out for a couple of minutes. I don’t know what happened next.”
Among those injured in the crash was a 13-year-old girl.
“She kind of, I guess, got jostled around a bit and broke her collar bone,” the girl’s father said. “So, yeah, she is in a sling now.”
Young, now facing several charges, including assault and battery on a bus driver, and wrongful interference of operation of a vehicle carrying passengers for hire, appeared distraught in Quincy District Court Tuesday.
Following the incident, Pierre and his coworkers are supporting a bill that would put protective measures in place for bus drivers, including a barrier between them and the public.
The bus driver said he is grateful things did not turn out worse.
“Anything can happen when you lose control of the bus,” he said. “I can kill anybody on the road, I can kill myself, I can kill everybody on the bus. So anything can happen and it is very scary for everybody.”
Young has been ordered held without bail and is due back in court for a dangerousness hearing on Monday.
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