OTTAWA POLICE IDENTIFY THREE PEOPLE KILLED IN BUS CRASH.

Public servants killed Friday on Ottawa transit

• A “beautiful soul,” a mother with extended family in the Netherlands and a dad beloved for his sense of humour were the people killed in Ottawa’s horrific bus crash last week, the city’s police revealed Monday.

All three were public servants in the federal government. The collision injured nearly two dozen more and its cause is still uncertain. Yet even as the city grieved with the families of those killed and police continued their investigation, the chair of the federal Transportation Safety Board took aim at the federal government for not doing more to increase bus safety. Bruce Thomlinson, 56, Judy Booth, 57, and Anja Van Beek, 65, were fatally hurt when a double-decker bus slammed into a shelter at a station west of downtown Ottawa at the start of the evening rush hour on Friday. It was on an express route from the city core, beginning a long run without a stop on its way to a western suburb. Thomlinson worked for the Canada Border Services Agency and Van Beek worked for the federal Treasury Board. Booth had retired from the National Capital Commission but still worked there part-time on contract. While the families of the three grappled with their loss over the weekend, some federal civil servants only learned what had happened to their co-workers upon returning to work on Monday. An email sent to CBSA staff Monday morning said one employee there had been killed and one seriously injured, and two other workers had family members hurt in the crash. One employee told The Canadian Press staff members were in tears after learning Thomlinson had been killed. Besides Thomlinson, Booth and Van Beek, 23 people were injured badly enough to be taken to hospitals by paramedics after the express bus slammed into the station shelter, the roof slicing into the vehicle’s upper deck.

Several of the survivors had limbs amputated, said Ottawa police Const. Chuck Benoit.

The police probe is now focused on speaking with eyewitnesses, combing through the wreckage, and retrieving data from the “black box” and cameras. Postmedia News reported Monday that the driver of the bus, who was arrested and briefly detained by police after Friday’s crash before being released without charge, had been on the job for less than a year and involved in two previous collisions.