The Oregonian | By Maxine Bernstein | September 11, 2023
The family of a 69-year-old man beaten to death while riding a bus on the way to church in Eugene last year filed a wrongful death lawsuit Monday against the Lane Transit District.
The suit alleges Lane Transit failed to provide adequate security for passengers in the wake of complaints by drivers, riders and the drivers’ union about violence on the transit system.
The district was notified before the beating of Travis A. Sanders of Springfield “that if additional measures were not taken, someone would end up getting killed on its buses,” the suit says.
The suit seeks up to $5 million in economic and $5 million in non-economic damages.
Sanders was riding the EmX bus when he was attacked about 9 a.m. Nov. 19, 2022, by another man who then fled, according to the lawsuit/court-police records.
The bus at the time was traveling near East 11th Avenue and Kincaid Street near the University of Oregon in Eugene.
Sanders died of head trauma at a local hospital. Police later arrested Derek Jules Dinnell, 30, on an allegation of second-degree murder.
A Lane County judge initially found Dinnell unable to aid in his own defense, but later found Dinnell fit to proceed after he was treated at the Oregon State Hospital. Trial is set for June 4.
Sanders, who cared for his elderly mother in Springfield, had taken the bus that day to attend a Seventh-day Adventist Church in Eugene. He was using a free bus pass from his medical insurance company, according to his daughter, Jennifer Sanders.
He was carrying his Bible when another man on the bus asked to see it and then “punched my dad with such force, it broke his neck and severed his spinal cord,” his daughter said in an interview.
She said her father, a South Dakota native, previously worked as an auto body painter, long-haul trucker and was trained as an emergency medical technician.
The family’s lawyer, Michael Fuller, submitted exhibits with the suit, including an email that Sanders’ family received from a former bus driver, Chuck Bergfeld.
Bergfeld wrote that as a former bus driver for the district, “many of us have voiced our concerns about the ever-increasing violence on the EmX” buses.
He wrote that he drove the EmX exclusively and witnessed violence and had been a “victim of abuse from the ridership.” The bus loops around 28 miles from Eugene to Springfield and averages 12,000 riders a day.
Another exhibit shows a message scrawled in black marker on a whiteboard in the transit district’s breakroom that said, “The West Eugene EMX is unsafe…When does the company take action? Does someone need to die first?” The message is believed to have been written sometime in late October 2022, according to Fuller.
Travis Sanders’ family said this photo was sent to them from a Lane Transit driver, showing a whiteboard in a transit break room before Sanders’ Nov. 19, 2022, killing on a bus in Eugene.
Another driver, Farley Craig, told the local Whole Community News site that it felt like a “free for all’’ on buses he drove and that he felt a “strong sense of unease’’ dealing with passengers’ drug use and mental health issues. He urged security for the buses.
“As a bus driver, we are neither trained, nor do we have the ability to continuously police all the issues that are going on, on the bus while driving a 60-foot machine down the road,” Craig said.
Had the family been aware of potential safety problems on the bus, her dad would have made other arrangements to get to church, Jennifer Sanders said.
“If we would have known what was going on with those buses, I or my grandmother would have told my dad to skip church or get there another way, and he wouldn’t have been on that bus,” she said.
Pat Walsh, chief marketing officer for Lane Transit District, said the district does not comment on pending litigation.
“We do everything we can to ensure a safe experience on our buses for both our passengers and our employees,” he said.
In a statement after Travis Sanders’ killing, Jameson T. Auten, the transit district’s chief executive officer, district board President Caitlin Vargas and an Amalgamated Transit Union 757 executive board officer William J. Bradley called the violence on the bus “shocking, sickening, and maddening.”
“While we evaluate all aspects of this incident internally, we also must fully recognize and acknowledge that this horrific incident is a symptom of a larger community issue that impacts all walks of life – not just our bus service,” their statement said.
The transit district said it would work with “union leadership, community partners, and governmental agencies” to provide safe service to its passengers but offered no details.
