Police in Washington, D.C. have arrested a bus driver on charges of involuntary manslaughter in connection with the deaths last week of Skagway Mayor Monica Carlson and her mother.
Forty-five-year-old Gerard Derrick James of Baltimore was arrested Thursday, the police department announced. Carlson and her mother, 85-year-old Cora Louise Adams, were crossing Pennsylvania Avenue when they were fatally struck last week by a tour bus that was making a left turn onto Pennsylvania.
A police officer’s written statement in the criminal case suggests the driver was responding to a cellphone call just before the collision.
The officer said the bus company turned over video from two safety cameras on board the bus. One trained on the driver shows his phone rang as he was executing the left turn, and that he transferred the phone from one hand to the other during the turn, according to the statement.
It also reports a forward-facing camera on the bus shows the women in the marked crosswalk just before the collision. James told investigators he was unaware of the pedestrians until he heard the impact, the document stated.
Carlson and Adams are the 11th and 12th pedestrian fatalities of the year for Washington, according to an unofficial list compiled by traffic safety advocates.
This is a developing story: Check back for updates. Kirsten Swann contributed to this report.
