SEPTA bus driver in Cedarbrook wounded in cross fire

A SEPTA officer examines a bullet hole in a bus windshield after a shooting near Cheltenham and Ogontz avenues, East Mount Airy, about 9:30 last night. The bus driver was hospitalized after being hit with shattered glass, Story on Page 22.
A SEPTA officer examines a bullet hole in a bus windshield after a shooting near Cheltenham and Ogontz avenues, East Mount Airy, about 9:30 last night. The bus driver was hospitalized after being hit with shattered glass, Story on Page 22. (YONG KIM / Staff photographer)
Posted: September 14, 2011

A SEPTA bus driver was injured by shattered glass during a shooting Tuesday night in the city's Cedarbrook section, only a week after another SEPTA driver was shot in South Philadelphia.

Police said the shooting occurred at 9:38 p.m. in the 7600 block of Ogontz Avenue. The bus driver, a man, was transported to a hospital for treatment and was in good condition, police said.

A 22-year-old man outside the bus was shot twice in the arm and taken by a medic unit to Albert Einstein Medical Center in stable condition.

SEPTA spokeswoman Jerri Williams said the Route 6 bus was stopped during a layover when the gunfire erupted.

"The bus just happened to be caught in the cross fire of a gun incident," Williams said.

Last week's shooting was the 46th assault on a SEPTA employee this year. The transit agency and the drivers' union have since urged special legal protection for transit workers.

Bernetta V. Rembert, 46, was shot in the right forearm by a man who tried to board her Route 79 bus while it was out of service.

Rembert drove herself about two miles to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania for treatment. Police have reported no arrests in the shooting.

State Sen. Christine M. Tartaglione (D., Phila.) has sponsored a bill that would add transit employees to a class of protected workers such as firefighters and police officers and upgrade attacks against them to aggravated assaults.


Contact staff writer Robert Moran at 215-854-5983 or bmoran@phillynews.com.

|
|
|
|
|