An Atlanta native who was struck and killed by a transit bus in San Francisco last week will be remembered at a Saturday memorial service.
Emily Elizabeth Dunn, 23, died Friday after being struck by a San Francisco Muni bus while in a crosswalk at an intersection in the city’s Castro district.
The San Francisco Examiner reported that police said Dunn had crossed about 95 percent of the street when she was struck by the bus, which was making a left turn.
According to Dunn’s family, the 2006 Lovett School graduate had recently graduated from Washington University in St. Louis and had moved to San Francisco last month to work for Superfly Presents, a production company that puts on large music festivals such as Bonnaroo, the four-day event held each June on a farm in Manchester, Tenn.
Deborah Dunn told the AJC on Wednesday that she helped move her daughter to California on July 22. She said Emily was so excited to land the job with the concert promoters so soon after graduating from college.
“She said it was her dream job,” Deborah Dunn said. “And she was so excited to be living in such a beautiful city.”
She said that on the day her daughter died, she was helping Superfly Presents find space for a new West Coast office they were opening. Emily Dunn had talked to her mother on the phone Friday afternoon, ending the call just three minutes before she was hit by the bus.
Deborah Dunn said that the driver, who had only been driving for Muni for seven months, was heading to a different route to provide overflow service on a busier route. She said dispatchers were supposed to give the driver a route to the new area, but didn’t and the driver was on a narrow street that buses weren’t supposed to be on when the accident occurred.
Deborah Dunn said the family had been told by investigators who had examined video from cameras inside the bus that the driver was checking his rear-view mirrors to see if he was going to clear the turn, and was not looking forward when the accident happened. A mirror on the bus struck the young woman in the head, knocking her to the ground, and the bus rolled over her. She died at the scene.
An avid traveler, Emily Dunn had visited 35 countries and six continents. She spent the year after her graduation from Lovett traveling in China and India, her mother said.
Deborah Dunn said that it was ironic how her daughter died, considering the somewhat dangerous situations she occasionally found herself in traveling in other countries.
“She was in an American city, in the middle of the day, 2:30, on a beautiful, sunny day, not a cloud in the sky,” she said.
A memorial service for Emily Dunn will be held at 1 p.m. Saturday at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Atlanta.
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