An incident involving gunfire on a Foothill Transit bus left an innocent woman wounded on Monday evening, according to the California Highway Patrol, as noted by KTLA. The altercation between two men on the westbound bus near the Puente Avenue ramps in Baldwin Park escalated when one of the men produced a firearm and started shooting, around 6 p.m. Lt. Saul Gomez said, "The passenger was struck. Whether it was a ricochet or a direct hit, we don’t know at the moment."
The swift actions taken by the bus driver, who pulled over in an attempt to de-escalate the situation, resulted in the armed suspect fleeing from the scene, CBS Los Angeles reported. Despite the earlier commotion where a passenger was shot in the back, the bus driver was uninjured.
Authorities, including the California Highway Patrol and local police departments, described the suspect as a Hispanic male in his 30s. Foothill Transit CEO Doran Barnes stated, "The bus has multiple security cameras, and immediately after the incident this evening, our team was dispatched… we were able to turn that footage over to CHP," as per KTLA, in hopes of aiding the search for the gunman.
While the CHP continued to seek the suspect believed to have fled to a nearby neighborhood, paramedics transported the woman in her 50s to the hospital with injuries not considered to be life-threatening. "The bus driver, from what we understand, did everything that he was trained to do by trying to diffuse the situation and mitigate it as best as possible," said CHP Lt. Saul Gomez in a statement obtained by ABC7.
