A recent violent attack on a HART bus driver prompted two of his colleagues to express their concerns about safety at the Hillsborough County transit agency's meeting Monday morning.
On July 19 HART driver Colin Brown was attacked while driving the #2 bus route by a woman named Mayi Nathali Rijo-Martinez, who was subsequently arrested and charged with battery on a public transit employee.
Madeline Orio, a bus driver for over five years, told HART board members that Brown suffered a concussion while being attacked, and that she wanted to convey the occasional dangers that she and her colleagues endure in their line of work.
After the meeting she told CL that a week before the attack on Colin Brown, a female bus driver she knows was pushed and shoved around while working. "It happens regularly…..we want to feel we're in a safe situation and that if something should happen, somebody will be there."
This article appears in Aug 2-8, 2012.