DRIVER'S RACE TO AID VICTIMS
Moments after 2019 crash revealed
In the moments after the deadly bus crash at Westboro station in 2019, rookie OC Transpo driver Aissatou Diallo's first concern was for her passengers.
She tried to help them as they screamed in agony and radioed dispatch for help. She told police that she could hear people crying, recalling that there was blood everywhere. The upper deck, where three passengers died and others suffered horrific, life-altering wounds, was inaccessible. So she tried instead to off-load passengers on the main floor, while at the same time calling out for folks to call 911 and help others.
Details of those first critical moments are revealed in police officer's notes filed with the court as part of a criminal case that is expected later this month. Diallo's account of what happened the evening of Jan. 11, 2019, has gone unreported until now.
Ottawa police Const. Corey Bourguignon was the first officer to approach the shaken and tearful bus driver. Bourguignon was in Vanier when the call came at 4 p.m., 10 minutes after the double-decker bus slammed into a steel awning. As he sped towards the scene, he learned there were multiple injuries. He made it there in just 16 minutes.
“I could see several people around me were deeply affected by this collision,” the officer wrote in his notes. “Looking at their faces, many had looks of horror, fear and were seen crying and appearing very vulnerable. I could see the helpless look of those stuck on the upper deck of the OC Transpo bus while firefighters made attempts to extract them.”
Bourguignon asked an OC
Transpo special constable, who was triaging wounded passengers who had been ejected, if the driver had been accounted for. The special constable pointed her out and the police officer approached her; she was hugging a supervisor.
Diallo was co-operative, Bourguignon wrote, her first concern was whether anyone had died. “She then began to ask me repeatedly if anyone had died. It was quite apparent that she was genuinely concerned for the passengers on the bus. She had tears streaming down her face and appeared helpless,” the constable wrote.
Diallo, then 44, then explained to the constable that the Express bus was overloaded and that “people were standing everywhere and there were too many of them.”
The driver then began to recall the moments leading to the deadly crash that claimed the lives of Anja
Van Beek, 65, Judy Booth, 57, and Bruce Thomlinson, 56.
According to Bourguignon's notes, Diallo said the overcrowded bus began to rock side-to-side — as she spoke, her body swayed from side to side as a demonstration. She said the double-decker veered to the right and she couldn't regain control. “She was unable to keep the bus on the roadway and it went up onto the curb and struck the bus shelter,” the officer wrote.
After the interview, Bourguignon writes that Diallo asked to leave the police cruiser and go sit in her supervisor's car. The officer opened the back door, but made a point of walking beside her. He then called his sergeant and explained that Diallo had expressed a desire to leave and is “currently walking back to the collision scene,” according to his notes.
At 5:25 p.m., the sergeant told
Bourguignon he had “reasonable and probable grounds from Det. (Alain) Boucher (of collision investigations) to arrest Diallo for dangerous driving causing death X 3,” according to his notes. The constable hung up, turned to Diallo and told her she was under arrest for three counts of dangerous driving causing death.
She asked the officer if he was going to put her in handcuffs, but Bourguignon said he didn't want to make a spectacle in light of the heavy media presence and onlookers with phones drawn.
Bourguignon read her rights and ushered her to the back seat of the cruiser for a second time and drove the single mother of three to the notorious cellblock in the bowels of Ottawa police headquarters. Along the way, the officer asked Diallo if she needed to call anyone, and she said her younger children
needed to be picked up at daycare.
The officer then checked in with the cellblock sergeant and Diallo was finally afforded the chance to call a lawyer, according to Bourguignon's notes. She had asked to speak to a lawyer earlier after being read her rights at the scene.
While police arrested Diallo shortly after the crash, before an investigation had been fully launched, she was not charged until seven months later. She faces three counts of dangerous driving causing death and 35 counts of dangerous driving causing bodily harm. None of the allegations in the charges against Diallo have been proven in court.
Diallo is represented by leading defence lawyers Solomon Friedman and Fady Mansour, both of whom declined to comment on her behalf. Calls to the crown attorney have not yet been returned.