The Jamaica Urban Transit Company Limited, JUTC, is reporting that there were 2 separate incidents on its buses resulting in injuries to passengers and damage to units yesterday.

The injuries to the passengers are not considered critical.

According to preliminary reports, at approximately 3:20pm, a route 97 bus (which plies Downtown to Bull Bay) was travelling along the intersection of Windward Road and South Camp Road, when passengers began shouting they can’t breathe. It’s understood that there was an altercation between students when one of them sprayed pepper spray. The driver reportedly opened the front door to get passengers out of the unit, while other passengers reportedly broke the side glass of the unit, both right and left in a bid to exit the bus. It is understood that police personnel who were passing by observed what was happening and provided assistance. The student who released the pepper spray was pointed out and was taken into police custody.

In the second incident, a stone was hurled inside a bus travelling from Half Way Tree to Spanish Town on route 32B at around 7:40pm in the vicinity of Eastwood Park Road and Courtney Walsh Drive. One passenger was injured, but his wounds are not considered life-threatening. The bus was intercepted by the Police along Washington Boulevard near Marverley, and a male passenger was taken to hospital.

The JUTC is encouraging persons who filmed the two incidents and anyone else who may have information, to provide it to the police to help in their investigations. We are also pleading with those who would seek to perpetrate violence, the hoodlums who engage in this reckless practice of stoning our buses to stop it! Such actions only serve to diminish the service we provide to the travelling public and endanger their lives.