MTA Settles Suit Over Rider’s Death

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has agreed to pay $200,000 to the family of a bus rider who was beaten to death after complaining when the driver stopped at a hamburger stand to allow a friend to buy a meal.

The MTA was sued because the bus driver neither interceded in the incident nor summoned paramedics or the police. She kept driving, according to a report to the transit agency’s board, which settled the family’s lawsuit last week.

In 1995, Danny Demetrio Ates, a 53-year-old night watchman, was on his way home to Wilmington as the bus in which he was riding passed through Carson.

According to court papers, driver Theresa Jojola made an unscheduled stop at a Jack in the Box to allow a friend on the bus, 21-year-old Ricardo Gordillo, to buy a burger and soda.

After Gordillo returned, Ates made a remark to him about holding up the bus for about 10 minutes. A fight broke out.

Gordillo took Ates off the bus and, according to the plaintiffs, slammed his head against the side of the bus.

Gordillo “beat him to death while the driver was sitting there doing nothing,” said Michael Portner, attorney for Ates’ wife and daughter. “She drove the bus off, leaving him lying in the street.”

Gordillo got back on the bus, and the driver continued her run without calling for assistance, said the MTA report. A witness called authorities.

Ates died the next morning from head trauma.

Gordillo was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to six years in prison. The driver was fired. She was prosecuted as an accessory to manslaughter, but acquitted, records show.

The MTA asserted that Ates provoked the fight with a “younger and stronger man” and that, even if the driver called for help, there was no evidence that it would have arrived in time to prevent the beating and save Ates’ life.

The transit agency, nonetheless, settled, said Nelson Atkins, an attorney representing the MTA, because “the responsibility was with the driver to do something.”