Boston Globe article on MBTA bus crash in Charles River

[Ron Newman]

This article ran in today's Boston Globe.

Fatal bus crash stuns T driver's family, stymies investigators

By Thomas C. Palmer Jr. and Alisa Valdes, Globe Staff, 01/15/97

CAMBRIDGE - The wife of Edward Bowman, the 45-year-old MBTA bus driver
killed when his bus crashed into the Charles River Monday night, said
yesterday that she and her two children were completely stunned by the
accident.

``Eddie was a wonderful husband and father,'' said a tearful Lougenia
Bowman, as she sat in the tidy Hyde Park home she shared with her husband
of 19 years. ``I spoke to him at 3:30 that afternoon, and he said he was
looking forward to coming home that night.''

Investigators yesterday ruled out mechanical failure and were stymied over
the cause of the crash.

An autopsy was performed yesterday on the body of Bowman, a 10-year
employee of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority who had a good
driving and work record. Results may not be available for several days.

``It's just odd,'' said Brian Kerins, a deputy commissioner of the
Metropolitan District Commission who was at the scene Monday night and
yesterday as the bus was pulled out. ``The whole thing is very, very odd.''

Last night, Lougenia Bowman said she and her children had gone to the
MBTA's Albany Street garage at 8:55 p.m. ``like we always do, to pick Eddie
up.

``It was strange that he wasn't there,'' said Bowman, whose first date with
her late husband was when he took her to the senior prom at Girls' High
School in Boston. ``He was a very consistent man, very punctual.''

Mrs. Bowman said she waited half an hour, then drove to a second bus
station. Then she called her parents in Boston, who often served as a
message service for the couple, but they had heard nothing from him. Then
she checked the Mattapan Square train station, from where her husband
sometimes walked home.. Then she and Tasha, 16, and Edwin, 13, went home.

In the driveway she was met by a next-door neighbor who ``asked if Eddie
was in the car,'' said Bowman. ``She said she wanted to ask him if he knew
the bus driver who was killed in the river. That was the first we had heard
about it.''

Yesterday, after the bus was pulled from the river,

officials said the ``Call police'' marquee was showing on it, but
apparently had not been turned on manually from inside the bus. An
electrical short was suspected. In addition, a radio call for assistance
automatically goes out if the help sign on the bus is manually activated,
and no such call was received.

The bus was examined in Charlestown and Everett yesterday for possible
mechanical failure, and T officials said it was found to be in full working
condition. The $236,000, 1995 Nova bus had been serviced in December.

There were no skid marks, investigators said, and the road was dry.

Officials were perplexed by the fatal crash. No one wanted to speculate
publicly about it, at least until toxicology and other medical questions
have been answered.

But in a statement read by the Bowman family's lawyer, Eddie Jenkins, the
family said: ``We assure you ... that Eddie Bowman did not use drugs or
alcohol. He did not even curse.''

Gail Titus, a union representative and captain at the Cabot Garage, where
Bowman had worked until late December before moving to the Albany Garage,
remembered Bowman as ``a very quiet guy, a very pleasant guy.'' She said no
one at work today had had any indication anything might have been wrong in
Bowman's life.

``He got along with everybody,'' Titus said. ``He was a family man. He
talked about his wife and his kids all the time, and he's into the
church.''

Officials had little evidence to go on following the vehicle's plunge from
Memorial Drive into the Charles at about 10 p.m. The No. 57 bus was about
45 minutes overdue at the Albany Street garage when the report of the
accident came in..

About an hour after the bus had finished its Watertown-to-Kenmore run on
Monday night, a State Police spokesman said, the bus apparently turned
right onto Memorial Drive from the Massachusetts Avenue bridge. It then
traveled about 600 feet, took a sudden right across the grass, passed
narrowly between two trees, broke through a pedestrian fence, and plunged
down into the icy waters of the Charles.

Bowman's body was removed about 50 minutes later and rescue teams were
unable to revive him. He was pronounced dead at Massachusetts General
Hospital.

The quick response of a large number of fire trucks and other emergency
vehicles made it hard for State Police to reconstruct the accident. ``There
were so many similar tire tracks, that kind of muddled up the scene,'' said
State Police spokesman Larry Gillis. ``That's kind of hurting the
investigation at this point.''

There were three recent incidents in Bowman's driving history, but none of
them appeared to have been serious.

In 1990, he was involved in an accident in a private vehicle, according to
a source, and filed an insurance claim for about $800. A year ago, Bowman
was accused by a Dorchester woman of having struck her with his bus during
a snowstorm while she rode her bicycle on Massachusetts Avenue in the Back
Bay, across the river from where he apparently took his bus on Monday
night.

MBTA officials said the woman had later recanted her story. A witness who
was plowing snow at the time said yesterday he had not seen Bowman's bus
strike the woman.

More recently, Bowman was among a number of drivers questioned about an
incident involving a man who was injured by a bus on a rainy night in
Harvard Square in October. Officials said they determined that neither
Bowman nor about half a dozen other drivers questioned were responsible.

``He had an excellent record,'' said Titus, who had spoken to Bowman about
a week and a half ago. ``His 10-year anniversary was coming up in March of
this year.''

She said they talked of their concerns about the state's plan to privatize
bus operations, and about their respective families. She noticed nothing
unusual, she said.

Officials said it appeared to have been a difficult maneuver to get the bus
between two trees and to the river's edge.

``Where he went in there really isn't much breathing room to wheel a
40-foot bus without hitting something,'' said Kerins. He said the incident
has investigators ``buffaloed.''

Buses are banned from the divided Memorial Drive parkway. The underpasses
nearest the crash site, the one under Massachusetts Avenue and the other
under Main Street, have 9-foot clearances. The bus is 10 feet 4 inches
high.

Paul Langner of the Globe staff contributed to this article.

This story ran on page b5 of the Boston Globe on 01/15/97.

--
Ron Newman rne...@cybercom.net
Web: http://www.cybercom.net/~rnewman/home.html