Alert Passenger Guides CARTA Bus to Halt for Stricken Driver

By Ashley Rowland, Chattanooga Times/Free Press, Tenn.

Jan. 20–Joyce Gay picked up a newspaper outside her Eastgate bus stop, boarded the 6 a.m. bus that would take her to her job working the grill at McDonald’s and sat down in the back.

Just a normal, chilly Tuesday morning on an empty bus. She and driver Tomie Cheaton started chatting.

He told her that he felt sick — maybe acid reflux, and his chest was a little tight. They talked about the chances of snow.

Mr. Cheaton grew quiet. Ms. Gay began reading her paper.

Then she heard the sound of tree limbs hitting the roof of the bus, and felt the vehicle swerving on the road. She looked up and saw Mr. Cheaton slumped in his seat.

“Tomie, are you all right?” she asked.

He didn’t answer. By the time she reached the front of the bus, Mr. Cheaton was unconscious. She grabbed the steering wheel and tried to move Mr. Cheaton’s foot off the brake pedal. It wouldn’t budge, so she mashed her foot down on top of his and steered the bus to a stop off Shallowford Road.

“I was trying to do what I could for him,” said Ms. Gay, 43. “I was scared to death, crying all at the same time.”

A truck driver pulled over and called 911 on his cell phone. Paramedics came and took Mr. Cheaton.

Ms. Gay went to work. She learned later that day that Mr. Cheaton had died at the hospital from a heart attack. He was 48. Ron Sweeney, CARTA general manager, said Mr. Cheaton, a former football player who liked to ride motorcycles, gained a reputation for being a reliable worker during his nine years at CARTA.

“He’s just a good driver. I wish we had a whole lot more like him,” Mr. Sweeney said.

His wife, Jerri Lynn Cheaton, said Mr. Cheaton — who had a 23-year-old son and a 19-yearold daughter from a previous marriage — had felt sick for several days and thought it was acid indigestion. He planned to go to the doctor that morning after his first bus run, which ended at 7:30 a.m. “It was a shock,” she said of his death. “It still is a shock, because Tomie was in such good physical condition. He could go down to the track and sprint all the way around it.”

Mrs. Cheaton spoke with Ms. Gay after her husband died so she would know what happened during his final moments. She feels better knowing that they were relatively peaceful, and that he had pulled the emergency brake before he lost consciousness.

“His intention was to take care of the passengers and the people on the streets, because he was a safe driver,” she said.

As for Ms. Gay, who got a free six-month bus pass from CARTA officials this week worth $240, she’ll miss chatting with her old bus driver.

“He was a very good person,” said Ms. Gay, who has three children, ages 27, 17 and 16. “He’d try to talk to you and keep you in line.”

—–

To see more of the Chattanooga Times/Free Press, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.timesfreepress.com.

Copyright (c) 2007, Chattanooga Times/Free Press, Tenn.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

MCD,