Bus hijacking death was Gwinnett’s, driver’s fault, lawsuit says
The daughter of a 2024 bus hijacking victim has filed a lawsuit saying the bus operator, Gwinnett County and the city of Atlanta are all to blame for not noticing the shooter’s erratic behavior long before the trigger was pulled.
The incident, which was part of a double-whammy of violent encounters for the hijacker that day, was preventable and should have been better controlled, according to a wrongful-death suit filed by Jazzmyn Byrd, the daughter of a man who was shot during the hijacking.
For one thing, Byrd said, the bus driver had plenty of time to observe the situation as it escalated, yet failed to maintain order, communicate with dispatch and his supervisors, and didn’t seek help from law enforcement, according to the suit. Byrd seeks to hold the unnamed driver, Ride Gwinnett operator Transdev Services, and the city of Atlanta liable for her father’s death.
“Defendants failed to exercise the degree of extraordinary diligence required of a common carrier under the circumstances presented,” Byrd said.
The county-spanning crisis began when Joseph Grier, a repeat violent offender according to an FBI report about the incident, witnessed a shooting at the Peachtree Center food court two years ago. In that incident, the shooter, Jeremy Malone, got into an argument with a man and shot him, then fired at strangers before being shot by an off-duty police officer.
Grier spoke with a reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution after that shooting. Standing at the scene in a torn-up shirt, Grier mentioned being in “extreme mode,” having a knife, and that he wanted to take the shooter’s gun.
Then, Grier hopped on a Ride Gwinnett bus.
According to the FBI’s affidavit, during the ride, Grier got into an argument with Ernest Byrd Jr., 58, took Byrd’s gun from him and shot him. Grier then took the 17 people onboard hostage. He held the bus driver at gunpoint as the bus veered onto the highway, the federal affidavit said. The hijacking turned into a police chase from downtown Atlanta to Stone Mountain, according to the lawsuit.
In her lawsuit, Byrd alleges the shooter’s behavior was flagrant and noticeable. The bus driver, bus company and city are liable for not scaling down the argument since there was “an opportunity for observation, assessment, communication, and response,” according to the complaint.
Many police officers, the driver and others saw Grier’s behavior before the shooting as he was walking around the scene of the Peachtree Center shooting, she said in the suit.
And after he was shot, Byrd’s father remained on the floor of the bus with one gunshot wound during the 45-minute police chase on the highway. She’s investigating the timeliness of his care, she said in the suit.
Mayor Andre Dickens said at the time of the incident that he had listened to the surveillance audio, and that Grier had bipolar disorder. The gunman made “statements concerning his mental condition, his failure to take prescribed medication, and his emotional state prior to the events that culminated,” Byrd said in her suit.
Byrd described her father as a family man and a protector in 2024, adding that he just helped Byrd move into her first apartment.