“As soon as I walk out that door, it’s just like, I don’t know if I’m coming home,” Charlotte bus driver David Fullard says.
Bus drivers across the country are pushing for the implementation of more safety measures at work.
In Charlotte, North Carolina, bus drivers are saying the violence needs to stop.
“As soon as I walk out that door, it’s just like, I don’t know if I’m coming home,” former Charlotte bus driver David Fullard says.
Fullard says he was so concerned about the violence, he started carrying a gun on the job.
In May of this year, surveillance footage captured a passenger threatening and drawing a gun after Fullard refused to let him get off the bus in between stops. Fullard and the passenger exchanged gunfire multiple times through the plastic partition.
The passenger was charged with assault with a deadly weapon.
Fullard was shot in the arm. Even though he says he acted in self-defense, he was terminated for carrying a gun while on the job. He was not charged.
"If there was a police presence on the bus that day, that commuter would have not gotten all the way down the aisle with his firearm,” Nichel Dunlap Thompson of the Charlotte-Metrolina Labor Council says. “If there was a police on the bus that day, David Fullard would still have a job.”
Speaking out for the first time with Inside Edition, Fullard and his attorney, Ken Harris, are demanding safer conditions for bus drivers.
“The unfortunate issue is that has become part of their work experience. Is that they’re now having to factor in the possibility that they may face a violent circumstance in the workplace and that’s a tough hurdle to climb if you’re facing it every day,” Harris says.
Bus drivers across the country are pushing for plastic partitions to help protect them from violence. However, Fullard and the grieving mother of a slain bus driver says she wants the partitions to be bulletproof.
Last February, Charlotte bus driver Ethan Rivera was on his normal route when he was fatally shot in the head by an angry driver in a fit of road rage.
“When I saw him, I had already knew that he was gone,” Ethan’s mother, Sylvia, says.
Sylvia tells Inside Edition bulletproof glass would have saved Ethan’s life.
The Charlotte Area Transit System says it’s committed to everyone’s safety but will continue to use plexiglass partitions, pointing out that no buses in the United States use bulletproof glass. They also say that while even one incident is too many, the number of violent incidents experienced by drivers in Charlotte make up less the one percent of the total interactions between drivers and the traveling public.
