Man killed by SEPTA bus

A man in a motorized wheelchair was killed and two dozen SEPTA bus passengers were shaken up in a grinding crash yesterday afternoon.

SEPTA spokesman Richard Maloney said the crash happened about 4:15 p.m. on Eighth Street just south of Girard Avenue.

Maloney said it appeared that the man was crossing Eighth from the west when a westbound 47 bus was turning left onto Eighth from Girard. The crash happened near the intersection, which has a hair salon on the southwest corner and a gas station on the southeast.

Witnesses said the wheelchair lodged in the bus' undercarriage, and scrape marks and blood stains on the pavement indicated that the man was dragged about 100 feet before the bus veered left onto the curbless sidewalk and came to a halt.

The man was pronounced dead at the scene. The body, beneath a blanket placed by the first police to arrive, was still on the street hours later, awaiting the medical examiner.

Witnesses said the man appeared to be the same man who was in an accident at the same intersection, also with a SEPTA bus, about three months ago. They said he was in his 50s and a resident of Ascension Manor, a senior-citizen apartment complex nearby at Franklin and Poplar Streets.

Police, SEPTA officials and administrators of the housing complex could not immediately confirm the man's identity.

Tiffany Prinski, who saw the body before it was covered, said the victim had massive injuries.

"I pray it was just a hit and he died," she said.

With tears streaming down her face as she sat on the ground, Shakeara Mitchell, 20, of North Philadelphia, said she was seated near the front of the bus when the accident occurred.

After the contact, "the bus started swerving," she said.

"The driver was yelling, 'Oh s-,' " Mitchell said.

Maloney said the driver, whom he did not name, has been a SEPTA bus operator for 16 years.

He said SEPTA's "systems-safety" engineers would look into the condition of the bus's brakes and other aspects of its equipment.

As per procedure, the driver was taken for drug-testing and questioning. White-hatted officers from the Philadelphia Police Department's Accident Investigation Division measured skid marks and sketched diagrams as passersby gathered and shook their heads.