I-Team: RTA did not know driver was wanted before bus crash

CLEVELAND (WJW) — The Fox 8 I-Team has found RTA did not know a bus driver had been wanted by the court when he plowed into a woman in a crosswalk.

RTA now admits the agency did not know about an arrest warrant for David Burkhalter until the I-Team discovered it.

Last week, the I-Team showed you an RTA bus driver who got fired for running over a woman downtown in a crosswalk. Then, the I-Team found the driver had been wanted for nearly a year for not showing up in Cleveland Municipal Court on a ticket for another bus accident.

The I-Team found that the agency was unaware of the warrant in that prior case even though RTA Police had also issued that ticket.

Last week, the driver told the I-Team he didn’t know about that other ticket, and he didn’t realize the woman he’d recently hit had been in a crosswalk.

David Burkhalter said, “She just walked out of nowhere!”

We reminded him that we had seen the video, and the woman had, clearly, been in a crosswalk.

Burkhalter asked, “So, she was in the crosswalk? With the white lines?” He added, “I still didn’t see that lady in that crosswalk.”

The woman hit by the bus survived. The I-Team asked RTA how no one there knew a bus driver had been wanted for a ticket issued by RTA Police.

A spokesman wrote, “Mr. Burkhalter failed to appear for court on 3/21/2023. No representatives from GCRTA or Transit Police were present at court on 3/21/2023 because it was an initial appearance/arraignment. The City of Cleveland registered the warrant for Failure to Appear on 4/14/2023, but the warrant was not entered into LEADS (law enforcement database) and does not appear in their system.”

In the meantime, the court also issued an arrest warrant for the latest bus crash when Burkhalter also did not address a ticket for that.

On Wednesday, the I-Team checked court records and found both warrants still active. The driver, still, had not taken care of either of them.

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