QUEENS VILLAGE (WABC) — Eyewitness News exclusively spoke to one of the passengers on the MTA bus that was part of a collision with a crane in Queens Village on Tuesday morning.
Several passengers and the bus driver were injured in the incident.
The crane and bus collided on Springfield Boulevard in Queens Village after 7 a.m.
An MTA official said a Q88 bus was making a left turn when an overland crane, also in motion on a cross street, collided with the left side of the turning bus.
“We didn’t see the crane coming. I don’t know if that person was trying to clip the light before it turned red, but our bus was turning perfectly fine and then the crane just hits us,” 18-year-old Emily McKinnon said.
McKinnon was still shaken up when she spoke exclusively with Eyewitness News.
The incoming college freshman was just trying to get to her job at a local hospital when she felt a jolt and saw three other passengers in front of her, violently thrown by the impact.
“I got on the bus, I sat down in the very back and then all of a sudden the crane just hit into the side of the truck. And I’m like, ‘Oh my God, what happened?’ I was holding on for my life back there,” McKinnon said.
She was sitting in the back of the Q88 bus when suddenly a crane smashed into the left side, shattering the bus windows and sending passengers flying.
“I had to run down, I was like; ‘Are you guys okay? Are you guys okay?’ … Two of them were crying already. They were shaken up,” McKinnon said.
McKinnon said pieces of the shattered window fell onto the floor, narrowly missing the passengers up front, closest to the bus driver.
“He got hit probably worse than all of us. The bus driver didn’t do anything wrong. The bus driver was trying to make a turn, then all of a sudden, the crane came and hit us. There was nothing wrong with the turn at all,” McKinnon said.
She said once she checked on everyone, she rushed off the bus to get to work but has been rattled ever since.
“It’s a bus accident. It’s not every day that this happens — especially in Queens … all of a sudden you’re like, oh my God, this happened to me? So even now I’m scared to go on the bus again, but I have to take the bus to get to work,” McKinnon said.
The MTA said three other passengers and the driver were treated for non-life-threatening injuries.
The cause of the crash is under further investigation by the NYPD.
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