A 53-year-old Chicago woman died while on a bus traveling in Niles on Oct. 20.
Paramedics were unable to revive the woman after the driver contacted 911 about an hour after she took her seat on the bus, according to police.
Niles Sgt. Robert Tornabene said the Cook County medical examiner’s initial autopsy did not reveal a cause of death and police are still waiting on the results of a toxicology report.
The bus driver told police he picked up the woman at 10 a.m. at the West Touhy Avenue and North Lehigh Avenue bus stop. She sat down near the front of the bus and about 25 minutes later the driver told police he noticed that she was slumped over as if she were sleeping.
The driver told officers he didn’t check on her because passengers routinely fall asleep on the bus. But he said he contacted his supervisor when he noticed she was still slumped over near the end of the route. He told officers he then heard the woman gasping, and he subsequently pulled over in the 6800 block of West Touhy Avenue and called 911.
Pace suburban bus spokesman Patrick Wilmot said the Pace bus the woman died on was on a Niles Free bus route and was operated by a driver employed by the village.
All village bus drivers are trained in CPR, said Hayley Garard, communications coordinator for Niles. She said there is “very little” a bus driver can do unless a passenger calls out for help.
“It’s difficult to tell if the passenger is just sleeping,” Garard said.
Wilmot said all Pace buses are equipped with technology to pinpoint the vehicle’s precise GPS coordinates in the event that first responders would need to reach the bus.
“The driver’s primary focus has to be on the safe operations of the bus,” Wilmot said. “Anything going on inside is secondary to that.”
Wilmot said he can only recall one other severe medical emergency to occur on a Pace bus in the past ten years.
Lee V. Gaines is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.