A veteran Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) bus operator has been terminated after surveillance video shows him follow a passenger off his bus and assault the man in the middle of the street.
The South Bay transit agency says “ongoing personnel action” is underway against Aaron Terry who did not return to work after the incident.
NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit recently obtained surveillance video of the assault through a public records request. It shows Terry at the wheel of VTA bus #8331 early in the morning on July 25, 2022 driving southbound on El Camino Real in Mountain View. There are several passengers on board.
At 5:15 a.m., a man pulls on a chord above his seat to stop the bus. He proceeds to walk towards the front door near the driver.
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The ambient bus noise in the video is loud, so it is hard to make out, but it seems the passenger tells Terry to pull over. Seconds later, Terry slows down by a bus stop.
The two men exchange words but the camera does not clearly pick up their conversation. The doors do not open for the passenger and Terry keeps driving only to stop again down the street where there is no bus stop. This time the doors open and the man gets out.
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Terry starts to drive off but quickly stops, again. With other riders on board, surveillance video show Terry get out of his own bus to go after the passenger. There is no audio but the cameras capture a brief face-to-face interaction on a sidewalk before Terry follows the man into the street.
Video shows the bus operator appear to square up, preparing to fight, all while the man is trying to back away from Terry into the middle of El Camino Real with a car passing by.
"The passenger used racial slurs."
Source close to VTA investigation
At 5:17 a.m., Terry lunges at the man, throws him down on the ground and kicks and hits him for approximately ten seconds. The man gets up and walks away while Terry returns to the bus where other passengers are watching through the front window.
“How come the driver didn’t let the passenger off and drive away?” said Eugene Bradley, CEO of Silicon Valley Transit Users. Bradley’s organization is a public transit advocacy and watchdog group that mostly monitors VTA. “I don’t care how stressed you are. We’re all under stress. Does not give you the excuse to leave a bus with passengers on it, to go get in an altercation with a passenger.”
When the Investigative Unit reached out to Aaron Terry, a family member responded saying “he has no comment and after 22 years, he’s no longer employed because of a belligerent drunk [who] affected him that day.”
A separate source close to VTA’s internal investigation told NBC Bay Area the passenger used racial slurs. The passenger's identity is unclear.
“What the driver should have done at that point, [he] should have at least contacted his supervisor over VTA’s emergency services and let them know what was happening and at least get law enforcement involved,” Bradley said.
When asked if law enforcement was contacted, a VTA spokesperson declined to comment and the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office said it has no report on file.
VTA declined an interview with the Investigative Unit and sent the following statement:
“VTA was made aware of the incident in question through a complaint to our Customer Service Department on July 25, 2022. After VTA became aware of the incident, it took swift action and subsequently terminated the operator. Because this is an ongoing personnel action, VTA cannot release further information.”
Terry was terminated on August 19, 2022.
The Investigative Unit asked VTA if Terry faced disciplinary action in the past, but a spokesperson declined to answer and the agency’s records unit said the files are not releasable under the California Public Records Act. NBC Bay Area is pushing for the release of those files since VTA is a public agency and Terry is a public employee. VTA says it is planning to respond.
In a statement Vice President of ATU Local 265 John Pospishek said “The union does not condone the behavior in this case. We also ask for public support not to condone a culture of racial slurs, verbal assaults or physical assaults operators have to endure [on a] daily basis.”
