UPDATE: Videos show chaotic seconds before MTA bus slams into Pikesville building
An MTA bus hurtled down a busy street in Pikesville on Wednesday evening, leaving cars strewn across the road before slamming into a FedEx store in a major crash that injured more than 30 people.
Baltimore County Fire Chief Joseph Dixon said officials were investigating what set off the chain of collisions in the 1500 block of Reisterstown Road shortly before 6 p.m. He likened the site to a “war scene.”
More than 100 first responders converged on the scene, which was closed to traffic and littered with damaged vehicles, debris and hanging power lines.
“It’s significant,” Dixon said to reporters on-site. He said one person was in critical condition. The cause of the incident remains under investigation.
Driving north on Reisterstown Road, Ayo Akinduro witnessed the lead-up to the crash. He said he saw a bus and a car driving southbound on Reisterstown Road, side by side, bumping into each other. The bus was traveling in the lane closest to the curb.
“They were driving too close, hitting each other, going at the same speed,” Akinduro said. “They came over to my lane.”
Akinduro doesn’t remember what came next. His airbags deployed and he was trapped inside, but within a few minutes medics were on the scene extracting people from cars.
A ride-share driver, Akinduro said a passenger in his car was taken to a hospital. Akinduro elected not to go.
Another witness, Allen Stamper, was grabbing carts from the parking lot of the Walgreens where he works when he heard a loud noise. He looked up and saw that a white SUV had been rear-ended, then noticed wires hanging at the other end of the street. He raced back into the store.
“I was confused at first, like, what’s going on?” he said.
His co-worker Augustine Ojun also heard a boom and screams as people scrambled down the street, which quickly filled with ambulances. He noticed the bus had crashed into a nearby building, and there were two other car crashes.
One customer came into the Walgreens and said he was almost hit by the bus, but the driver maneuvered around him.
The FedEx building suffered structural damage, according to county fire department officials. Vehicle parts, bricks and other debris piled around the crash site. Fire officials warned employees to stay away from the store and marked the door with a notice: “DANGER.” The bus lost its entire front windshield.
Shirnique Butler was pulling up to the FedEx building in her car when she heard a crash.
Then she saw people racing out of the store, Butler said. The bus seemed to have hit a telephone pole before plowing into the building. The pole fell onto the street.
“The bus driver was in there for 35 minutes,” Butler said. “He was screaming the entire time they were trying to get him out.”
Emergency personnel worked to rescue the driver, Butler said, at one point attaching chains to the front of the bus and trying to separate the parts to reach him.
Butler said the driver was airlifted and first responders helped injured passengers off the bus one by one, “like an assembly line.”
A nurse, Butler said she had never seen anything like it. She asked medics if she could assist them and felt helpless when they told her she couldn’t.
Officials requested assistance from other jurisdictions, including a medical evacuation helicopter, the Shock Trauma Go Team, and two medical ambulance buses. Dixon confirmed that one person was transported to a hospital by air, and most of the other injuries were believed to be minor.
In a statement posted on X, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said his administration was monitoring the situation and would support local officials as needed.
“Dawn and I are keeping everyone impacted in our hearts and prayers,” Moore said. “We are deeply grateful for our first responders who acted with speed and skill to ensure the safety of our neighbors.”
Baltimore County Councilman Julian Jones, the Democratic nominee for county executive, also released a statement, saying he had “every confidence” in first responders to bring the emergency to a safe conclusion.
Spokespeople for the MTA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Dixon said fire crews received the call to respond to a multivehicle crash shortly before 6 p.m. The incident appeared to involve about a dozen vehicles, he said, and the wreckage extended from the intersection of Reisterstown Road and Old Court Road to the intersection at McHenry Avenue.
From Old Court Road, the wreckage stretched two or three blocks south along Reisterstown Road. Five mangled cars littered both sides of the street. A telephone pole, cut in half, lay across the road, still attached to the wires. The bus, its front and side pulled apart to extract people, was facing south, still attached to the side of the brick building.
Downed power lines from the crash were complicating efforts, fire department spokesperson Andrew Laird said earlier Wednesday evening. Officials from Baltimore Gas and Electric did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The crashes happened near a strip mall that houses businesses including Mattress Firm, Goldberg’s New York Bagels and Coffee, and a nail salon.
Witnesses described a moment of chaos and confusion.
Joshua Chen, whose family owns China King Restaurant on Reisterstown Road, said he was taking orders when he saw a driver attempting to turn into a Mobil gas station and heard a horn blaring. He looked away and resumed his tasks.
“And then I heard just screeching, and then boom, boom, boom,” Chen said. He looked back to see a red minivan running into a Hyundai Elantra.
He walked outside to survey the damage and felt sick with dread when he saw the full scope of the crash.
“Everything just sunk when I saw the bus,” Chen said.
A video posted to social media appeared to show several vehicles on both sides of the road, some with their airbags deployed.
“Oh my god,” bystanders were recorded saying. “The bus was driving at a very high speed.”
Banner photojournalist Jerry Jackson contributed to this story.
This story has been updated.
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