When a VTA bus driver was threatened by a passenger with a 17-inch blade machete, his panic button alert did not go straight to law enforcement, NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit found. Candice Nguyen reports.
“He told me, make this U-turn or else you're going to start bleeding.”
Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) bus operator Carlos Zarate recalls the May 2022 incident where he was alone with a passenger who pulled out a 17-inch blade machete and hijacked his bus.
Zarate spoke publicly for the first time in an exclusive with NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit. Our team obtained the surveillance video in recent months after first investigating bus driver attacks last December.
The young San Jose father said his life flashed before his eyes, and he thought of his six-month-old baby daughter at home.
I hit the panic button.
Carlos Zarate, VTA bus operator
“That was my biggest thing, you know, getting hit with the machete and...my baby being embarrassed of me later on or [me] just not being here for her anymore,” he said. “At that point is when I hit the panic button.”
Local
VTA said its Operations Control Center (OCC) data shows Zarate pressed his emergency alert button at 5:05 a.m., activating the bus microphones so transit dispatchers could listen in. A minute later, at 5:06 a.m., OCC contacted the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office, which VTA contracts with for about $12 to 14 million dollars a year.
The transit dispatcher doesn’t appear to realize Zarate’s life is in danger.
Get a weekly recap of the latest San Francisco Bay Area housing news. Sign up for NBC Bay Area’s Housing Deconstructed newsletter.
At 5:16 a.m., you can hear the siren from the first Sheriff’s unit arrive. Both VTA and the sheriff’s office told NBC Bay Area they are proud of their individual response times.
VTA said it responded in one minute since that’s how long it took for their dispatcher to contact law enforcement. With a two-minute gap unaccounted for, sheriff’s officials said their call for service began at 5:08 a.m., and its deputy only took eight minutes to get on scene.
WHO'S TRACKING THE ENTIRE RESPONSE TIME?
But no one, we found, considered how long Zarate actually waited for help: A total of 11 minutes.
Every second of that nightmare mattered, Zarate said, when both he and the public were at risk.
“That person had told me to hit a car, and I told them I couldn’t…yeah, over the 880 overpass,” Zarate said.
Zarate managed to keep the suspect calm. The individual was Shyra Myrtle Bryant, who also goes by Junior. Bryant had two outstanding warrants at the time and was later convicted for kidnapping Zarate with a deadly or dangerous weapon. Bryant is currently serving a prison sentence.
Although Zarate walked off that bus without a scratch, he said his injuries weren’t physical.
“Right now, I am being treated for PTSD and anxiety. [I have] a lot of mood swings…It sucks because I don’t feel safe at home,” he said.
NOT THE ONLY BUS DRIVER IMPACTED
Zarate is far from the only bus driver impacted by what he feels was an inefficient and delayed emergency response. NBC Bay Area reported on this same issue with AC Transit back in 2018.
AC Transit bus operator Celestine Gonzales was attacked on the job last summer. She said it took 15 to 20 minutes for deputies to get to her.
“It just took forever for [transit dispatchers] to answer, and I’m like ‘What are you guys doing?” she recalled.
AC Transit refused to confirm with NBC Bay Area their response time in Gonzales’ incident citing privacy policies. When it comes to emergency responders, agency spokesperson Robert Lyles said in an email their “system is engineered, so that there is no requirement for a direct conversation with the bus operator.”
But, for years, bus drivers have told NBC Bay Area, when their life or a passenger’s life is at risk, they did a direct line of communication to law enforcement.
“From my experience, [11 minutes] is an extraordinary response time in terms of what you see happening in other places where it could be in excess of 20 or 30 minutes for priority one calls," said VTA’s Chief of System Safety and Security Aston Greene. "So I'm very happy with that response time."
Some of these issues are not unique to any particular transit agency.
VTA Director of System Safety and Security Aston Greene
Greene agreed to an on-camera interview with NBC Bay Area to talk about these issues. We asked him about VTA’s two-dispatch emergency response system and whether anyone is adding up those separate response times so VTA board members and the public can get a sense of how long bus drivers are waiting for help.
“If there is a request specifically, we tend to do the analysis,” he said. “Our principle is for our first responders to get there as soon as possible…And so there are several ways that communication can take place.”
Greene said VTA is not reporting entire response times – VTA OCC’s call for service and the sheriff’s office call for service – to board members.
“No. Our responsibility is to report on the contract, scope of work with law enforcement, particularly crime stats,” he said.
NBC Bay Area reached out to several board member and is waiting for responses.
Greene said everyone is trying to make public transit safer.
“As with any incident, we always look for areas for improvement, right? And so, for me and what I'm going to champion are new security technologies…video cameras with audio, so that the sheriff's department and other persons can get quick access to the situational awareness,” he said.
Societal issues are spilling onto systems, Greene said, and operators like Zarate are heroes.
“I think [Zarate’s] actions were heroic. I think what he did was in the best interest of the public,” Greene said.
But what about the drivers’ safety, Zarate still wonders.
“We’re public figures too, and we need help,” Zarate said. “I hope they could get to us. We don’t have anything to protect ourselves.”
Investigative Reporter Candice Nguyen is leading this investigation. If you want to reach out to her about this report or another story tip, e-mail candice.nguyen@nbcuni.com.
