News

Run Over by Metro

Continued from page 2

During the last ten years Metro buses have killed 27 people, and one-third of those accidents were caused by the bus drivers. Dozens more crashes have resulted in serious injuries. As recently as last Thursday, another accident occurred when a Metro bus struck 67-year-old Jennive Smalls while she was in a crosswalk at the intersection of Fannin and Congress. Smalls was treated at Memorial Hermann Hospital for injuries to her back, hip, neck and leg, and was released later that day.

Many survivors of Metro bus accidents never fully recover from their injuries. Many undergo years of physical and psychological therapy. Making matters worse, financial settlements provided by Metro frequently fall far short of covering medical expenses, causing families to drown in debt. Several victims complained that Metro let years pass before resolving claims.

During our investigation, the Press discovered revealing internal memos and e-mails that offer an insider's look into how Metro regards and compensates its victims.

Many of the survivors and families who appear in this article initially declined to be interviewed because they did not want to relive their tragic experiences. All stepped forward to tell their stories, united by a single goal: that Metro stop hiding behind misleading statistics and start increasing safety measures through better driver training and more complete oversight of its operations to ensure that its buses never kill again.

"There's no excuse," Allen says. "Metro drivers are up off the ground. They have huge windows. There are no blind spots on a bus."

Jeffrey Yu-Chang Kao, a 31-year-old patent attorney for Shell Oil Company, stood downtown at the corner of Walker and Smith waiting for the pedestrian signal to change to "Walk."

Alroyce Sheppard, a 20-year veteran Metro driver, sat idling at a red light inside his empty bus, waiting for a left-turn arrow to enter the intersection.

Both got their green lights and proceeded.

Kao was halfway through the crosswalk when the turning bus knocked him and spun him 15 feet through the air.

"You could hear the grunt that was forced out on impact," a witness told police. "When his head hit the concrete it was like the sound billiard balls make when you break them."

Kao landed at the bus's rear right tire, sprung to his feet, fell to his knees and rolled onto his back. Blood oozed from his ears.

Teeth clenched, eyes shut, breathing noisily through his nose and mouth, he was strapped to a stretcher and lifted into an ambulance.

Loan-Anh Tran Kao, eight and a half months pregnant, was in her kitchen in Meyerland when she got the news. She responded defiantly.

"No," she insisted. "Jeff's about to be home right now. The kids are in their pajamas. Dinner is waiting."

Loan-Anh Kao arrived at Memorial Hermann Hospital with her two small children in tow. The kids slept on air mattresses in a waiting room outside the intensive care unit while she spent the night pacing the hallways.

Though her husband was unconscious, Loan-Anh didn't believe the injury was all that serious.

"You couldn't tell he was hurt," she says. "He wasn't bruised or bloody."

Jeffrey Kao had suffered a massive brain hemorrhage. Thirty-nine hours after being hit, he died.

Sheppard didn't have much to say about the November 3, 2003, accident. He told police: "I was at the light. The light changed. There was no one in the crosswalk. I made the turn and there he was."

Witnesses were outraged that the driver never exited the bus to offer help. He just sat there, they said, apparently filling out an accident report until police arrived.

A few weeks later two police officers rang the bell at Sheppard's westside home and served him an arrest warrant for criminally negligent homicide, a felony. He faced a maximum ten-year prison sentence. "It was only an accident," said Sheppard, his seven-year-old daughter at his side.

A year later Sheppard was found guilty and sentenced to three days in jail and two years' probation.

Metro terminated Sheppard long before his case went to trial.

Reached by phone, Sheppard wanted to share his story with the Press. But his attorneys advised against it since he is still on probation.

"Al remains devastated by the accident," says defense attorney Stanley Schneider. "Metro hung him out to dry."

Kao's family members say Sheppard got off easy. Metro, they say, got off scot-free.

"Metro would like to blame it on one bad bus driver," says Edmund Kao, Jeffrey's younger brother.

Edmund Kao suffered from severe depression after his brother's death. He quit his $70,000-a-year job working as a chemical engineer for a small Houston biotech company, and spent several months in therapy.

"I needed to stop doing everything and try to get better or I was gonna die," he says.

Edmund Kao has since become obsessive about monitoring Metro's operations. During Sheppard's criminal trial, he learned that Metro buses are supposed to travel between three and five miles per hour when turning through intersections. The bus that hit his brother was traveling at twice that rate.

Edmund Kao frequently returns to the intersection where his brother was hit. Armed with a video camera, he tapes Metro buses turning south from Walker onto Smith and calculates their speeds. He says he has recorded buses blowing through red lights and reports that all the buses he has taped turned at a rate of speed between seven and 13 miles per hour.

"They drive like they're road-raging motorists in small cars," he says. "They're actually road-raging motorists in 40-ton buses, which are much harder to stop."

For two years after her husband's death, Loan-Anh Kao says, she was hounded by harassing phone calls from Metro. There was never an apology, she says. Only nagging, persistent calls from Metro's claims department. "We would like to close your husband's file," an adjuster would say. "To whom should we make this check?"

Loan-Anh Kao says a claims adjuster once even threatened to sue her for not immediately accepting Metro's compensation offer. Metro spokesman Ken Connaughton denies it.

In 1973, the state legislature passed the Texas Tort Claims Act, which limits Metro's liability to $100,000. That's the maximum amount Metro pays for causing an accident.

Loan-Anh Kao, a Harvard-trained attorney still retained by Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw LLP, has lobbied state lawmakers to increase the damage cap or at least index it for inflation and cost-of-living increases, but none has taken up the issue.

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