A Detroit bus driver died from coronavirus two weeks after making a Facebook Live post calling out a passenger for coughing several times on the bus without covering her mouth. The death of Jason Hargrove, a Transportation Equipment Operator for the Detroit Department of Transportation, was announced by Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan on Thursday (April 2).
“He knew his life was being put in jeopardy — even though he was going to work for the citizens of Detroit every day — by somebody who just didn’t care and now he’s gone,” Duggan said.
The Amalgamated Transit Union also tweeted a message confirming Hargrove’s death. Hargrove belonged to the Union since 2016 and was one of two AUT members to die from COVID-19. The second victim, Joseph Madore, was a paratransit operator for First Transit, Greater Hartford Transit District.
#1u #Solidarity #COVID19 #Frontlines pic.twitter.com/OGeW5AsL1m
— ATU, Transit Union (@ATUComm) April 3, 2020
Hargrove vented about his safety being at risk in an 8-minute video posted on March 21. “This coronavirus s**t is for real and we out here as public workers, doing our job, trying to make an honest living to take care of our families, but for you to get on the bus and stand on the bus and cough several times without covering up your mouth and you know we in the middle of a pandemic…that lets me know that some folks don’t care. Utterly don’t give a f**k, excuse my language but that’s how I feel right about now.”
Hargrove said that the woman was in her late 50s or early 60s and coughed four to five times. There were around nine passengers were on the bus at the time.
“I ain’t blaming nobody but that woman that did that s**t,” he continued. “For us to get through this ya’ll need to take this s**t serious. It’s folks dying out here [because] of this s**t. I’m mad right now because that s**t was uncalled for. I’m trying to be the professional that they want me to be, so I kept my mouth closed. But at some point..you gotta’ draw the line and say ‘enough is enough.’ That s**t was uncalled for. I feel violated. I feel violated for the folks that were on the bus when this happened.”
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer declared a state of emergency and a state of disaster over the spread of COVID-19. Since reporting its first two cases on March 10, more than 12,000 people in Michigan have tested positive for the disease, and nearly 500 people have died. Many of the cases have been centered in Detroit and Oakland County.
Watch Hargrove’s video below.