HSR driver alleges she was spat on before hair pulling incident

The HSR bus driver who was caught on camera pulling a passenger's hair is alleging that it happened after she was spit on.

Hamilton police say they were called about a disturbance at Concession Street and East 13th on Tuesday.

Police say they were called by the driver of the route 23 Upper Gage bus, who had stopped the bus after a verbal altercation.

• City investigating after photos show HSR driver pulling passenger by hair

Police Const. Claus Wagner says the driver told police a passenger "spit in her face" and that she then grabbed the passenger by the hair to hold on to her.

The driver then let go after "several seconds," Wagner said, and the passenger walked away before police arrived. Investigators are now trying to track her down.

Transit workers are very vulnerable.- Eric Tuck, ATU local 107 president

Images of the altercation were widely spread on social media, and showed the driver holding on to the passenger's hair.

Eric Tuck, president of the ATU union local 107, told CBC News that the driver stopped the bus while "trying to get away from a continued verbal assault."

"It continued outside and the operator was assaulted," Tuck said, adding that she is now off work, due to "trauma."

That's a decidedly different account than the one shared by passengers on the bus, who told CBC News yesterday that the incident happened because of a fare dispute.

Passenger Sierra Johnson took photos of the incident. She said the driver gave her and the woman standing in front of her a hard time for not having photo identification with their student bus passes.

Johnson got on after putting in an extra 30 cents in the fare box, while the woman in front of her got on after putting in another bus ticket, she says.

Then, she alleges, things escalated.

"She started giving me a hard time for standing on the bus," Johnson said. "Then she told me to get off my effing phone." Johnson says she was calling to complain to HSR at the time.

As things continued, the driver was agitated and missed an older woman's stop, Johnson says. The driver then stopped the bus and got off to use her phone.

That's when the other woman got off and confronted her, saying she was going to be late for work, Johnson says.

"That's when the bus driver pulled her hair," Johnson said. "It was out of anger. She was trying to whip her around."

Tuck told CBC News that Johnson is "known to HSR," and they have "had incidents with her in the past."

He said incidents like these are one of the reasons that the union has pushed for video cameras to be installed on city buses.

"Transit workers are very vulnerable," Tuck said.

The city is also conducting an investigation into the incident.

adam.carter@cbc.ca