MTA bus crashes into Brooklyn Burger King after driver suffers medical emergency
A New York City bus driver crashed into a closed Burger King early Thursday in Brooklyn after he apparently suffered some sort of medical episode while driving.
The unidentified driver remains in critical condition at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn following the accident, which happened near Fort Hamilton Parkway and Caton Avenue in Kensington just after midnight.
Neither of his passengers was hurt. And, fortunately for the driver, one of them was a medical worker who rushed to his aid.
“Once we hit Burger King, I got out of my seat and I immediately went to him to try to help him out,” passenger Valorie Turner, 60, told Fox 5. “He was moaning; he was saying whatever. I started CPR on him.”
Turner added that the bus sped up just before the crash — “and before I knew it, we was in Burger King.”
Shocking surveillance footage obtained by Fox showed the Metropolitan Transit Authority bus careening through the streets and doding a car stopped at a red light — just before it slammed into the building.
Pictures from the scene showed police and firefighters gathered around the MTA bus, which was lodged in the front of the fast food restaurant.
Jabid Syed, the Burger King’s owner, raced out of his Staten Island home as soon as cops called him at 1:30 a.m., he told Fox.
“I said, ‘OK, let me see what I can do,” Syed told Fox in a predawn interview, as the shattered bus sat in the background.
“I tried to call my managers, nobody was answering,” he continued. “So I tried my best to get here as soon as possible.”
The electric utility cut service to the building, which stood in shambles Thursday morning.
Construction crews must make sure the restaurant is structurally sound before they try to reopen it, according to the network.
Syed, the owner, said there’s likely thousands of dollars’ worth of damage.
With Post wires
