INQUIRER: SEPTA officials defended a decision not to call for medical help when a bus driver reported that a passenger – who later died on the Nite Owl bus – was unresponsive and drooling and had wet his pants early Sunday. Agency spokesman Richard Maloney said Tuesday that it was “not that unusual” for bus or train operators to encounter passengers who were very intoxicated. In this case, Maloney said, the bus driver and supervisors believed that the man, Leonard Sedden, 68, was drunk and asleep. Willie Brown, president of the union that represents bus drivers, criticized SEPTA, saying the supervisors should have called for help. “SEPTA drills this into employees all the time: You never sacrifice safety for schedule,” Brown said. “I think they [the agency] violated their own rule.” MORE
TANGENTIALLY RELATED: When the first officer to arrive approached Joseph Genovese after he ran down two Missouri tourists outside of Citizens Bank Park in July 2008 – a crash that killed one of the victims and forever changed the other’s life – Genovese had just one question: “He said to me ‘Duff, what’s going to happen next? Is my insurance going to go up?’ ” Philadelphia Police Officer Kevin Duffy testified yesterday at Genovese’s sentencing hearing in Common Pleas Court. Well, for the next seven to 14 years Genovese, 20, won’t have to worry about insurance as he spends that time in state prison paying in years for what can never be paid for with money. MORE