No charges in case of man who died when struck by bus at Halifax terminal

Halifax police have decided against laying charges after a pedestrian was struck and killed by a city bus last fall at a busy terminal — in a case where few details have been released.

Const. Nicolas Gagnon said in an email Wednesday that police have closed the file after investigating the Oct. 29 death of a 67-year-old man. His identity hasn’t been provided.

The police and Halifax Transit have not elaborated about what happened that evening at the main Metro Transit bridge terminal, in the suburb of Dartmouth.

At the time, police said the man died “after contact was made” with a moving Metro Transit bus.

In an emailed comment on Thursday, Maggie-Jane Spray, a spokeswoman for Halifax Transit, said safety is a top priority for the agency.

“However, with every safety measure in place, we cannot always prevent accidents from occurring. We do not release information on incidents such as this to protect not only our operators and staff, but also for the well-being of victims and families,” she said.

Norm Collins, an advocate for pedestrian safety, said in an email Thursday that facts surrounding public transit-related deaths should be made public so that lessons are learned.

Collins, president and founder of the Crosswalk Safety Society of Nova Scotia, said understanding what occurred at the terminal may be important in designing ways to avoid similar incidents.

“I do believe it is as important to understand why tickets aren’t issued and charges aren’t laid, as it is when they are,” he wrote.

“If the fault was that the pedestrian was, for example, in a location where he or she was not allowed, it strikes me as an opportunity to communicate that to the public in order that other pedestrians don’t enter such areas, putting themselves at risk,” he added, noting he had no information on whether that was the case in the October death.

Collins said he believes any safety shortcomings that may have contributed to the collision, such as a lack of fencing to discourage pedestrians entering bus lanes, should be provided to the municipality to “minimize the likelihood of a reoccurrence.”

There were at least two other incidents of buses striking pedestrians last year in Halifax, including an Aug. 25 case in which a bus hit a pedestrian in the city’s downtown during evening traffic. Police said the man was taken to hospital with injuries in that incident.

Another collision on Jan. 10, 2022, saw a 31-year-old woman taken to hospital after being struck by the mirror of a Metro Transit bus.

In November 2018, a 52-year-old woman was struck by a bus in Dartmouth while on a marked crosswalk and suffered serious injuries.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 18, 2023.