King County Metro Bus Runs Over Homeless Woman on Renton Sidewalk, Driver Flees Scene
Won by Bernard Law Group.
A King County Metro bus driver cut a corner short near the Renton Transit Center on March 10, 2021, rolled the rear tires over Jessica Chapel as she lay on the sidewalk, then canceled her own emergency call and left the scene, costing Chapel her leg.
What happened
Just after 11 a.m. on March 10, 2021, a King County Metro bus pulled out of the South Renton Park and Ride and turned right onto South Grady Way. The driver cut the corner too tight. The bus's rear tires climbed the curb and rolled over Jessica Chapel, a 34-year-old homeless woman who had been resting on the sidewalk.
Chapel suffered catastrophic leg injuries. Surgeons were unable to save the limb. Her leg was amputated.
Witnesses and bus camera footage documented what happened next. The driver, Felicia Collins, stopped the bus and exited to check on Chapel. She called for emergency help. Then she canceled the call, got back behind the wheel, and drove away. A passerby had to call 911. Prosecutors later charged Collins with felony hit-and-run. She resigned from King County Metro before the agency could terminate her.
Bernard Law Group attorneys Kirk Bernard and Viivi Vanderslice filed a civil lawsuit against King County Metro and Collins in September 2021 in King County Superior Court. The complaint alleged negligence in the operation of a public transit vehicle and argued that Collins's decision to leave a severely injured person on the pavement without waiting for emergency responders compounded the harm. Bernard described the injuries as gruesome and questioned how a trained professional driver could have left Chapel bleeding on the sidewalk.
King County Metro, in response to press inquiries, stated that its operators are trained to call for help and remain on scene after any incident, and characterized Collins's conduct as contrary to that training.
No settlement or verdict amount has been reported in public records or press coverage; the case is documented here at the lawsuit-filing stage.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.KOMO News - King County Metro sued over crash that left hit-and-run victim with one leg·Archived copy
- 2.KIRO 7 - Victim of hit-and-run sues KC Metro and bus driver
- 3.Fox 13 Seattle - Woman sues King County Metro after being ran over by bus·Archived copy
- 4.Insurance Journal - Woman's Washington Suit Claims Bus Drove Over Her Leg, Resulting in Amputation·Archived copy
More proven verdicts from Bernard Law Group
All Bernard Law Group proven verdicts →A San Francisco jury returned what was then the largest personal-injury verdict ever against the city after a Municipal Railway repair truck ran a red light, struck another vehicle, and jumped a sidewalk, killing a four-year-old girl and injuring three others walking with her.
Scott Bliss suffered catastrophic brain injury when a Scarsella Bros. dump truck made an illegal U-turn on an I-5 WSDOT construction ramp in Centralia, yielding what is believed to be the largest WSDOT settlement in Lewis County history.
Related premises liability verdicts
Anapol Weiss shareholder Kristen Gibbons Feden helped secure $1.6 billion in default verdicts for 104 women sexually abused as children by former Long Island pediatrician Stuart Copperman, one of the largest cumulative civil awards against a single individual in U.S. history.
A Dallas jury awarded $1.1 billion against a trust fund heir who beat a 2-year-old into a permanent vegetative state in 2021, a verdict the firm calls the largest child-assault award in U.S. history.
A Clayton County jury awarded $1 billion to a woman who was raped at age 14 by an armed security guard her employer hired without verifying he was licensed to carry a weapon.
Joseph Bruno and Bruno & Bruno served as lead plaintiffs' counsel in a landmark class action brought by more than 8,000 Gentilly residents exposed to a butadiene tank-car fire in 1987, securing a jury verdict that included $2.5 billion in punitive damages against CSX Transportation alone, later reduced to $850 million on appeal and affirmed by Louisiana's Fourth Circuit.