MTA Bus Operator Kills Elderly Woman on Left-Turn, Continues Driving

M.T.A. Bus Fatally Strikes Woman, 70, in Brooklyn

A Metropolitan Transportation Authority bus hit a 70-year-old woman who was crossing the street in Brooklyn on Tuesday morning, killing her, and then continued on to a nearby depot, the authorities said.

By the time investigators determined through surveillance video which bus was involved in the crash, a second driver had picked it up from the depot and begun a new route, apparently not knowing it had hit a woman earlier in the morning, an authority spokeswoman, Amanda Kwan, said.

The police said the surveillance video obtained by investigators showed the bus stopping briefly after hitting the woman, Carol Bell, at the intersection of Sackman and Fulton Streets in the Broadway Junction section of Brooklyn around 6:15 a.m. Then the bus drove off to the East New York Depot, several blocks away, near the intersection of Jamaica Avenue and Broadway, the police said.

The driver was not immediately located on Tuesday morning, but by the afternoon, investigators had identified the driver and were questioning that person, the police said.

Ms. Kwan said the authorities towed the bus back to the depot after identifying its rooftop number through surveillance video and pulling it over along the B15 bus route, with a fresh driver at its wheel.

Ms. Bell lived at the 200-bed Magnolia House Women’s Shelter, just a block from the scene of the crash.

She was walking north on Sackman Street and crossing Fulton when she was hit by a southbound bus that was making a left turn onto Fulton, the police said.

Mario Abreu, the owner of Abreu’s Grocery Store, said Ms. Bell had passed his shop Tuesday morning as he was preparing to open, as she did almost every day around the same time. She would often come inside to buy something sweet — Mike and Ike candy was one of her favorites — and then return later in the morning around 10:30 a.m.

“She was one of the best there,” Mr. Abreu said, referring to the shelter. “She was clean and nice and polite. She was one of the best there.”

Photos from the scene showed a walker lying in the street. Mr. Abreu said that after hearing how bad it was, he decided not to get too close.

A police spokesman said an investigation into the crash was continuing, and Ms. Kwan said the agency was assisting in that investigation and conducting its own.