AUSTIN, Texas — Four people are injured after a Capital Metro bus crashed into a house in North Central Austin on Monday afternoon, Austin-Travis County EMS says.
The crash happened at E. 53rd Street and Duval, west of Airport Boulevard, at around 3 p.m. on Monday.
Fifteen people were involved in the incident, with four patients needing treatment. They were sent to Dell Seton Medical Center with non-life-threatening injuries, EMS says. They said there were nine people on board the bus at the time of the crash.
A man inside the home told KVUE he was just about to take a shower in the room that was struck. An officer told him if he would have taken that shower, it would have been his last.
“You could see the front window portion [of the bus] crushing through the window [of the home],” said Abby Nirenberg, inside home at the time of the crash.
Nirenberg said she and her friends were inside watching a movie when the house started shaking.
“We ran into the other room. The main point of impact was the bedroom. You could see the crazy damage just all over the floor, everything just destroyed.”
Those inside the home are okay, but it sent four others to hospital -- the driver of the pickup truck, two bus passengers and the bus driver.
“The bus driver was definitely injured,” said Nirenberg. “I’ve never heard screaming like that.”
“Her leg was…she was kind of pinned in, so we were able to kind of get her out of the driver seat and over and calm down, but her left leg was injured,” said Mario De Leon, general manger of Home Slice Pizza, across the street from the house.
De Leon said he helped get the bus driver out.
Surveillance video from the restaurant shows one moment the bus driver stops at intersection. The next thing you see is the CapMetro bus and a pickup truck colliding before the bus hits the home.
The intersection is a four-way stop that De Leon said has become dangerous.
“We’ve wanted a street light here since we’ve opened last May. A lot of people run this [intersection]."
CapMetro reviewed footage from the bus camera and said the bus driver does not appear to be at fault. Austin-Travis County EMS said the driver of the pickup truck had a medical emergency, but no word yet on whether that caused the crash. No one is said to be seriously injured.
The damage to the house is not believed to be serious.
The third car involved was car parked at the home.