A Brooklyn woman recovering from a stroke says she was assaulted by an Access-A-Ride driver and – although the attack was caught on surveillance video – she says she’s been unable to obtain the driver’s name in order to press charges.
The assault unfolded on the afternoon of Nov. 1, as Kisha Jones got out of a vehicle which was dispatched by CTG, a private company contracted by the MTA to transport disabled New Yorkers under the agency’s Access-A-Ride program. In the video, provided by Jones’ attorney, you can see the driver following Jones as she exits the van, and then he backs her into a parked truck and begins to kick her and grapple with her.
“I saw the devil in that man. Once he got started he couldn’t stop,” Jones said. “This man plundered me. Kicking me like a dog."
The disabled passenger’s attorney, Nicholas Liakas, has now filed notice Jones intends to sue both the MTA and CTG, claiming the transportation agency and its private contractor didn’t do enough to supervise, monitor, and track broker drivers — who now account for more than two thirds of all Access-A-Ride trips in the Paratransit program.
"The problem is, if it’s being outsourced to these companies and there is really no oversight, it’s just basically a blank check," Liakas said. "Things like this are going to happen and they’re going to happen more frequently."
Get Tri-state area news delivered to your inbox. Sign up for NBC New York's News Headlines newsletter.
In an interview with the I-Team that took place before the notice of claim was filed, Chris Pangilinan, the MTA's Vice President of Paratransit, said the agency ordered its contractor to terminate the driver after becoming aware of the incident.
"I was horrified by what I saw. That is not customer service. That is the opposite of customer service," Pangilinan said.
But Pangilinan took issue with the notion private broker drivers make Access-A-Ride trips less safe. He cited recent surveys that show 73 percent of Access-A-Ride passengers are satisfied with the service.
"The brokers are a tremendous benefit," Pangilinan said. "They are smaller vehicles. They blend in with the rest of the vehicles so it doesn’t look like a big bus dropping you off. Other features people like about the broker service, which has enabled them to use Access-A-Ride more and have Access-A-Ride meet their needs better."
The MTA declined to comment on the lawsuit Kisha Jones intends to file.
Representatives from CTG did not return the I-Team’s request for comment.
Although the driver had been terminated from Access-A-Ride, neither the MTA nor the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission could say whether the driver has retained his TLC license which allows drivers to accept ride share trips from the general population.
Jones, who said she is a former Access-A-Ride driver who was fired after a vehicle accident, says one of her biggest frustrations is that she has so far been unable to identify the driver who assaulted her - even though the attack was captured on surveillance video.
After reporting the incident to the NYPD, Jones said she was unable to pick the driver out of a police lineup. But she had hoped there would be proof of his identity in the trip history on the Access-A-Ride cellphone app.
The MTA said information like driver names, vehicle license plates, and GPS data are not kept in trip histories accessible on user phones. But the transportation agency said customers, including Jones, could simply contact the MTA and the transportation agency would provide the driver’s identity.
As this article was published, the MTA had yet to provide that information to Jones or her attorney. The NYPD says the case is still under investigation.
