On Tuesday, January 14th, around 3:00 p.m., a Vermont/Sunset-bound LA Metro line 182 bus traveling down St George Street hit a tree on the sidewalk next to John Marshall High School.

While approaching the Saint George/Tracy Street stop, the driver, overwhelmed by the number of kids, the sun’s glare, and an already mostly filled bus, steered the bus too close to the curb a little too soon. This caused another LA Metro Personnel not driving at the time of the incident to comment that they should watch the tree seconds before hitting the overhanging tree with the bus.
One student on the bus was Rashel Ramirez. She described the impact as “really loud…” and thought the impact at first by thinking, “…someone threw glass on the bus…” and that she “…didn’t know what was going on, and I was asking everyone around me what was going on.”

As a result of this incident, all passengers were disembarked at the Saint George/Tracy bus stop, and no students or metro personnel were hurt. The only visible damage to the bus was the broken right mirror and blemishes on the front right side of the bus.
The bus was fleet number 1937, an Axess BRT 40’ CNG bus built by ENC (Formerly known as ElDorado National-California) in 2021.

Impacted students and riders caught subsequent buses to reach their destinations, with Rashel saying, “I had to wait an extra 30 minutes to go home, and it was like a Tuesday, so I should have been home by then.”