All six victims of Ottawa bus crash now ID'd
Megan Gillis, QMI Agency
Sep 19, 2013 , Last Updated: 3:01 PM ET
All six victims killed when a Ottawa transit bus crashed into a passenger train have now been identified as officials continued their probe Thursday morning.
They are: Michael Bleakney, 57, Connor Boyd, 21, Karen Krzyzewski, 53, Kyle Nash, 21, Rob More, 35, Dave Woodard, 45.
Woodard, a nearly 10-year veteran of OC Transpo, was driving the bus,
His devastated widow, Terry, said she is sure the accident wasn’t her husband’s fault. He was a trained and experienced driver with no health problems and a clean record, she said.
“I want to say please don’t blame him,” Terry told QMI Agency on Thursday morning. “It’s crazy because he wouldn’t have a made a mistake.
“Only one person will know (what really happened) and it’s him and he brought it with him,” she said.
Carleton University students Boyd and Nash were friends and graduates of John McCrae Secondary School in the Barrhaven area of the city.
Friends took to social media to express their shock and sadness.
“I’m utterly destroyed,” said one friend on Twitter, who said they’d been friends since age seven.
“Rest in Peace Connor Boyd, you always knew how to make me smile when I was down,” Brittany Bedford tweeted. “Gone but never forgotten.”
All but one of the three dozen people who were taken to hospital had been released by Thursday morning.
Investigators now have the locomotive event recorders — also known as the black boxes — from both the train and the bus.
The Transportation Safety Board doesn’t typically investigate bus crashes so it may take longer for them to determine what information they can get from the bus’s recorder, TSB spokeswoman Julie Leroux said.
They will also get the data recorder to make sure the signals at the level crossing were working properly, although witnesses told QMI Agency on Wednesday the bus crashed through the barriers, which were down and had lights flashing.
The TSB will also interview passengers on the bus and train, witnesses who observed the crash and the crew of the train.
“It’s going to help us focus on specific parts of the investigation,” Leroux said. “Right now, we investigate all the possibilities. We haven’t ruled out anything yet. We are going to go through all the information we have and see where the investigation will lead us.”
It’s too soon to tell how long that will take, she said.
Canada: All six victims of Ottawa bus crash now ID'd
It'll be a while before we know anything for sure but in an earlier article the bus driver's widow made this statement:
"I just want to make sure those families know," she said. "He had told me how heavy these (double-decker) buses were. He told me they were very heavy and tough to drive."
On the John Oakley Show on AM640 she said her husband didn't like to drive them but didn't have a choice.
Canada: Crash 'wasn't his fault': Bus driver's widow
So we shall see where it all ends up. Grim and just so very, very tragic.