When Jason Oppie was a boy with a Seattle Times paper route, he met the nicest guy who had what seemed like the coolest job ever: Bus operator.
“When I told him that, he gave me a copy of his 1986 route book, which I still have,” Oppie recalled. “For a kid who loved Metro, this was like a holy item to me, and I still have that route book.”
Now Oppie is a Metro Transit Supervisor for Base Operations. The driver who gave him the route book? A beloved Metro operator named Mark McLaughlin, who died tragically 25 years ago when he was shot by a passenger as he drove a bus over the Aurora Bridge. The bus plunged off the bridge and onto the roof of an apartment; one other passenger died, and the shooter took his own life. Another 32 passengers were injured.
Mr. McLaughlin, 44, was killed on Nov. 27, 1998, while driving Route 359. He left behind two teenage sons.
On Friday, Nov. 24, Metro will honor Mr. McLaughlin, along with all our other operators who do so much for our community, by briefly pausing bus service at 4 p.m. for a moment of reflection and remembrance.
Hundreds of Metro and Sound Transit buses will be in service at that time, and the majority will pull over and stop. Operators participating in the moment of remembrance will stop only where and when it’s safe to do so. Operators will not pause service if they are traveling on highways or on roadways where there’s no safe place to pull over.
Metro will notify riders via transit alerts and on-board announcements leading up to the moment of remembrance. Metro extends its appreciation to riders for respecting and supporting this observance and we give our assurance that transit service will quickly resume at the conclusion.
Brian Eggen, now Metro Transit Superintendent for Service Quality, was working as an operator on the day of the tragedy. Mr. McLaughlin was a super-friendly guy who would hand out bubble gum to riders, and Eggen said it was unbelievable to learn about his death from a reporter who approached him outside his bus base.
“Mark and I had both driven together out of North Base” for a time, Eggen recalled. “It was (paratransit) vans. He was on one end of the route and I was on the other, and we’d wave as we passed each other all day long.
“He was such a big guy. I’m a pretty big guy, too, but he’d really have to scrunch to get into these little vans, because he was like 6 feet, 6 inches tall.”
News of Mr. McLaughlin’s death hit the operator community hard, along with their family members, Eggen said.
“We had answering machines in those days,” he said. “I got home and my answering machine was full of people saying, “Are you okay?
“It’s hard to believe that it’s been 25 years.”
Mark was the driver for 2 of my regular routes. He was such an incredible guy. I was the type to always sit in the very back of the bus, but whenever Mark was driving, I always sat up front and chatted with him. I had gotten a brown/orange metro jacket from somewhere, and Mark, noticing this, one day had a bag full of metro vests and jackets and gear for me. Humanity lost a real good one. What a tragedy.
Metro and the entire bus community honored Mark with a splendid parade of buses through town and up to the Coliseum (Key Arena) and then putting on a service. Buses came from as far away as Salem, OR and Vancouver, BC to be in the parade. Metro restored Artic #2106 as the host coach in the parade. Number 2106 was Mark’s badge number. The entire event was very well done.
Very very nice! That is a huge way to honor 2106.
I remember bus driver Mark McLaughlin because I was a regular passenger on his route. That particular day, I was returning from out of town and heard the live reporting of the incident. It is so sad that he was violently taken from life.
Silas was unstable, but because of my autism, I did not recognize what he was referring to. Saying “they should be shot”, etc. Think about my contributions to society before you just cast me off and destroy humanity upon my death.
So I expect to be murdered I guess…