Flying Bus Wheel Sends Oklahoma Man to Hospital
Oct. 11--Jeremy Gilleland heard the boom from across the street where he was eating lunch.
He said he ran toward the auto salvage business where he works and saw that a bus wheel and tire had just smashed into the driver's side of a small, red, two-door car parked in front of the business.
Inside the car, a man was slumped over both front seats, his leg caught in the door the tire rested on. He pulled the nearly chest-high wheel from the car, supported the man's bleeding head with his hand and made sure he didn't move, he said.
"I need you to wake up! I need you to stay with me!" he told the man as he patted him on the cheek.
The man, whose name was not released Wednesday, had just been hit by a one of two wheels that came loose from a Metro Transit bus about noon Wednesday as it drove south in the 1400 block of S Robinson, Metro Transit spokeswoman Davan Gardner said. The car was parked about 100 feet in front of the bus, while the second wheel was several hundred feet behind the bus. The bus was left sitting on three sets of tires and the left rear axle.
The injured 41-year-old man was taken in critical condition to OU Medical Center, said Lara O'Leary, spokeswoman for the Emergency Medical Services Authority.
"The paramedics said this was the strangest call they had ever made," O'Leary said.
'Bad luck'
Gilleland said the injured man was attempting to get out of his car to do business at Bethany Imports Inc., where Gilleland works, when "bad luck" struck.
"He was lying over the seat and he was bleeding," Gilleland said. "His leg was pinned in between the bottom rocker of the door and the tire. You could tell he had just started to get out."
The wheel struck the car with such force, Gilleland said, it caved in part of the side paneling and continued to spin as it shredded fabric on the front driver's side seat.
The bus was following route 14 -- which begins in downtown and runs east along SW 44 to the Metro Tech South Bryant Campus -- when the wheels fell off, Gardner said.
Gardner said there were passengers on the bus at the time of the accident, but couldn't say how many. None were injured.
The bus was put onto a flatbed truck and taken to the Metro Transit maintenance shop, she said. It was not yet clear what caused the wheels to fall off. Gardner said she did not know when the bus was last serviced.
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