An elderly Deer Park woman feared for her safety after being “trapped” on a bus on Station Road for about an hour.
The passenger, who did not want to be named, said she caught the 420 bus regularly and had never felt so scared.
She said her bus was en route to Watergardens when the driver spotted a passenger with a bottle of beer.
The woman said the driver told the man alcohol consumption was not permitted and to leave the bus.
She said the passenger, who she believed had a disability, was not threatening or harming anyone at the time.
When he refused to leave the bus, she said, the driver became aggressive.
The woman said the driver stopped the bus and grabbed the man by his hands to lead him off, but he still refused.
“The bus driver then shut all the doors and called the police,” she said.
“The man said to the driver, ‘Open the doors and I will go out and catch another bus’, but he didn’t open the doors.
“He said, ‘I’m not letting you out, not only him but nobody’,” she said. “Everybody on the bus was scared.
“We were scared of the driver, who was yelling and walking up and down.”
The woman said all passengers were forced to wait about an hour on the bus until police arrived.
She said she had not been able to sleep since the incident and was now too scared to catch public transport, even though she has no other way of getting around.
A Sita Group bus company spokesman said the driver had acted according to protocols. He said it was illegal for passengers to consume alcohol on buses.
“We have told bus drivers, at all times, if there’s any danger with intoxicated people, they need to contact police,” he said. “Unfortunately, when you call triple 000, you must wait at that area and there are delays.”
He said there had been a number of assaults on bus drivers and passengers could have left the bus, but “no one wanted to leave the bus because they weren’t at their destination”. He said that more often, passengers complained if the bus driver did not act in such a situation.
