the skyway incidents

10.19.05: motorist drives to the skyway with a body lodged in his windshield.

1 • 2 • 3

11.17.04: bus passengers prevent a skyway disaster when driver dies.
Thomas Grove, 61

thank you, jumpnews contributor, bill e., brandon, fl.

11.18.04, cnn.com: Passengers stop bus from falling off bridge, Driver dies from possible heart attack
Thursday, November 18, 2004 Posted: 8:28 AM EST (1328 GMT)
ST. PETERSBURG, Florida (AP) -- Passengers stopped a charter bus from plunging nearly 200 feet off a bridge after the driver collapsed, apparently from a heart attack.
The bus was near the top of the Sunshine Skyway bridge Wednesday afternoon when Thomas Grove, 61, fell out of his seat, passengers and authorities said.
It slammed into the 3-foot concrete wall, which blocks vehicles from tumbling into Tampa Bay. Three of the five passengers jumped out of their seats and ran toward the front.
"Grab the wheel!" 70-year-old Kenneth McAllister recalled shouting to his wife, Mary, and another woman.
The women held the steering wheel until McAllister could slide into the driver's seat. He struggled to keep the bus in its lane and hit the brake. It stopped just before the highest part of the bridge.
The passengers -- all unharmed -- called 911 and Amtrak, which uses the bus to shuttle passengers from Fort Myers to Tampa. They spent another 10 minutes in the bus because they didn't know how to open the door.
Two nurses driving by stopped to help, performing CPR on the driver. Grove, of Pinellas Park, died within hours at a hospital. Early reports suggested he may have had a heart attack, authorities said.
"It happened so fast," McAllister, of Bradenton, said from his cell phone aboard an Amtrak train to New York City late Wednesday. "We all felt so lucky to be alive."

11.18.04, © St. Petersburg Times, Bus riders step up to avert a Skyway disaster. When the driver loses consciousness near the top of the bridge, passengers struggle to stop the bus. By JAMIE THOMPSON, Published November 18, 2004
The charter bus was near the top of the Sunshine Skyway bridge Wednesday afternoon when it suddenly veered to the right and slammed into the 3-foot concrete wall.
The 61-year-old driver toppled out of his seat and collapsed by the bus doors.
As the bus swerved 197 feet above Tampa Bay, three of the five passengers jumped out of their seats and ran toward the front, fearing they all might pitch over the side of the bridge.
"Grab the wheel!" 70-year-old Kenneth McAllister shouted to his wife and another woman.
The women lurched toward the wheel and held it until McAllister could slide into the driver's seat.
He fought to keep the large bus in its lane as cars whizzed past. His foot slammed the brake, bringing the bus to a stop. It was about 3:55 p.m.
Breathless, shaking, the five passengers stared at each other, unable to speak. The bus driver lay limp by the door.
"It happened so fast," McAllister said from his cell phone aboard an Amtrak train to New York City late Wednesday. "We all felt so lucky to be alive."
None of the passengers was injured, but the driver, Thomas Grove of Pinellas Park, died within hours at Bayfront Medical Center, said Florida Highway Patrol spokesman Larry Coggins. Initial reports suggested Grove may have had a heart attack, authorities said.
The bus is owned by Martz First Class Coach in St. Petersburg but operates for Amtrak, shuttling passengers from Fort Myers to Tampa.
The drama Wednesday began shortly before 4 p.m. as five passengers sat quietly on the bus, hoping to catch a train to New York City.
Three passengers slept, McAllister said, while he and his wife, Mary, talked quietly and looked out the window at the Sunshine Skyway bridge. The Bradenton retirees were heading to see their son and grandchildren in New York.
McAllister first noticed something was wrong as the bus traveled toward the top in the northbound lane. He felt it veer and then heard the bus hit the concrete wall.
His wife, sitting in the aisle seat, quickly ran toward the front, as did another passenger, and McAllister followed, shouting instructions.
"The bus driver's head was down by the door, and we thought maybe he fell asleep and hit his head," Mary McAllister said.
All her husband could think about was grabbing the wheel and finding the brakes, which he finally did.
He slammed them all the way to the floor, and the bus stopped just before the highest part of the Skyway. It took about 20 seconds to stop it, he said.
As the wind whipped the bus, McAllister wasn't sure what to do next. No one knew how to open the doors. And they knew the driver needed help immediately.
With his foot pressed to the brake, McAllister waved to passing cars, trying to get them to stop. Finally, two nurses pulled over, but neither knew how to open the bus doors.
Passengers called 911 and McAllister dialed Amtrak.
"I'm driving one of your buses, I'm on the top of the Skyway, and I don't work for you," McAllister told them. "You better get someone up here, fast!"
After about 10 minutes, the passengers were able to open the doors, and the nurses began performing CPR on the driver.
The passengers stood together in the wind, worrying about the driver, talking about how lucky they were.
"It was very scary, but I think in a time like that, my husband realized he had to do something," Mary McAllister said. "We were all in really big trouble."
To her, it came as no surprise that her husband, a retired IRS agent, acted so swiftly. He's always reading safety material on buses, planes or trains, and acts with a calm head, she said.
Bob Dasch, Martz safety director, said bus driver Grove was an experienced employee who drove buses up north, retired to Florida and then wanted to continue driving.
"He was fantastic with people," Dasch said. "He was an excellent driver and physically fit."
Grove will be missed, said Dasch, who was grateful that none of the passengers were injured.
"They did a wonderful job," he said, "everything they could."
Amtrak sent a station wagon to take the five passengers - including a retired couple from New Jersey and a South Carolina attorney - to the station so they wouldn't miss their train. They squeezed into the wagon with their luggage and talked about the ordeal on the way to the train station.
"It's amazing how all five of us stuck together and we all became sort of like good friends in a very short time," Kenneth McAllister said. "Everybody was thanking everybody, saying "Man, you did a great job.' It was a good feeling."
By nightfall, McAllister and the other passengers were gliding north on their train.
They hoped the rest of their journey would be uneventful.
"That's why I decided to travel this way," he said, chuckling. "I thought it would be safer than flying."
- Times researchers Carolyn Edds and Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

05.24.98: 10,000-pound tractor tumbles off skyway

sptimes.com, By JAMES HARPER, © St. Petersburg Times, published May 24, 1998
ST. PETERSBURG -- A passing semitrailer truck and a top-heavy load nearly pulled a Parrish man and his son over the edge of the Sunshine Skyway early Saturday evening.
Instead, the 10,000-pound tractor they were carrying toppled into Tampa Bay from near the 170-foot-high center of the bridge. Their truck and the trailer they were pulling came to rest facing oncoming traffic on the downhill slope. Father and son were shaken but unhurt.
"I didn't save us," Randy Sharp told his 9-year-old son, Matthew, as they recounted the accident at a nearby rest stop. "The Lord saved us."
With tears in their eyes, the two stood a moment and prayed by the mangled rear bumper of their pickup truck.
The accident happened as the Sharps were heading south on the Skyway at about 8 p.m. Sharp had borrowed the Ford front-end loader from a friend, Bill Heaberlin of Clearwater, in order to do some land clearing and grading at his property in Manatee County. The tractor was chained to a flat-bed trailer behind Sharp's medium-duty truck.
Just as they were crossing the top of the bridge, a semitrailer sped past them, Randy Sharp said. The turbulent wind caused Sharp's rig to fishtail.
"We hit the right side of the bridge, and that caused us to swerve," said Matthew. After they bounced from one rail to the other and spun around, "We looked behind us, and the tractor was gone."
Randy Sharp said he didn't see the tractor fall or even which side of the bridge it flew off of. But the force of the accident was enough to break the heavy chains he had secured it with.
Florida Highway Patrol Trooper Paul Kopriva, who investigated the accident, said he's never seen an accident in which the wind from a passing semitrailer blew a vehicle off the Skyway.
But Sharp's load was unusually top-heavy, Kopriva said. Not unsafe or improperly loaded, he added, but it was unwieldy enough to make it harder for Sharp to maintain control in a sudden mishap.
Oddly, Kopriva had stopped Sharp just north of the main bridge and cited him for an improper tag and lighting on the trailer. But it was still daylight when the accident occurred.
The semitrailer that Sharp said caused the accident did not remain at the scene.
Kopriva said no charges will be filed. But he did have to tell Sharp that the Coast Guard will hold him responsible for retrieving the tractor and for cleaning up the oil and diesel fuel that were in it.

10.25.87: thrill seekers • St. Petersburg Times

08.03.84: gunman on skyway

12.08.81: suicide shooter • St. Petersburg Times
William Roth Johnson, 32, died

04.13.78: nearby jumping incident • St. Petersburg Times
Eustice Ross, male, 21

05.12.77: non-jumping skyway suicide

10.12.73: man found stabbed to death on skyway.
Peter Dent, 24

skyway bomb threats

09.17.09: skyway bridge reopens after bomb threat.
07.01.02: skyway bomb threat. 07.02.02: arrest made.
03.26.98: bomb threat briefly closes bridge.
05.22.80: bomb threat halts traffic at skyway.

The Haunted Skyway Bridge in Florida, Published May 08, 2007, by Pen

The Skyway bridge, a beautiful sight in itself. From the top you can see countless miles of open water, and experience the peace, that nature has to offer. It is unfortunate the bridge is also associated with suicidal jumpers. Throughout the years several people have taken their life by jumping from the Skyway bridge. Is it possible some they never left the place, where they chose to leave it all behind? Fishermen of the Skyway pier tell countless stories of seeing "ghost". What is now the Skyway pier used to be the old Skyway Bridge where the stories of the jumper, and the hitchhiker will live forever.

Throughout the 1960's and 1970's scores of motorists using the Sunshine Skyway Bridge claimed to see a young blonde lady dressed in a tight T-shirt in an off-white or tan outfit poised to jump off of one of the main spans. She was reported during both day and night, many times when the structures were shrouded in fog. When Sheriff's Deputies would investigate, no trace of the young lady could be found, either at the top of the bridge, or in the waters below. By the end of the 1970's reports of a lady of similar appearance filtered in to toll collectors and local Sheriff's Deputies, only this time she was hitchhiking. Several motorists would pick her up.

She explained in a nervous tone that she had to get to the other side of the bridge. She would become more notably agitated the closer to the top of the bridge that the motorists went. When the drivers of the cars would turn around to reassure her that everything was all right she had simply vanished. These incidents involved many out of state drivers not familiar with these stories! Once the old southbound Skyway span was destroyed in May 1980 by the freighter "Summit Venture", the spectral Skyway lady was never seen again. Was she the spirit of a young lady who unbeknownst to others jumped to her death from the Skyway in the 1960's, or was she a harbinger of the death and terror that would occur on the old south span on that fateful May day in 1980?

Another legend or haunting of the Skyway involves a Greyhound bus and it's 22 passengers. Now known as the "ghost bus". On the morning of May 9, 1980, a storm born in Texas several days earlier slammed into the Tampa Bay area, pelting it with heavy rains and winds. At 6:20 A.M. that morning, Harbor Pilot John Lerro climbed the pilot's ladder in order to navigate the empty 606' long phosphate freighter, the "Summit Venture" from the mouth of Tampa Bay to port of Tampa. As the ship continued to head east in the channel not far from Egmont Key, visibility became near zero.

The storm became so intense that Lerro lost his bearings by 800' and the result was that the bow of the ship struck the southbound span's support pier at 7:34 A.M., resulting in a horrendous collapse of the main span. Six automobiles, one pick up truck, and one Greyhound bus bound for Miami plummeted almost 200' down at an estimated speed of 67 miles per hour into the waters of Tampa Bay-only one person survived-the pick up truck landed first onto the ship itself, then into the Bay-the driver of the pick up truck was recovered from the water, hospitalized and later released.

All in all 35 people died that morning. The Greyhound bus, a 1975 MC-B Crusader, had one driver and 22 passengers onboard. The bus was sheared by the impact so severely that the entire top 2/3rds of it was shorn off "like a pop top". More then 20 people have reported seeing the shadow image of a Greyhound driving down what is now the fishing pier, as if on the main road. The driver has the looking straight ahead, with both hands on the wheel, as if nothing was wrong. Some say a lady wearing black is looking out the back of the bus, smiling, and waving at those who are staring. The the bus the just disappears off the end of the pier. Others say every now, and then you can feel a strong breeze, and smell gas, as if a bus just drove past you.

Does the stories just make for good fisherman tales, perhaps they are just stories. It makes for a good spooky tale whether you believe it or not. The Sunshine Skyway bridge connects Tampa / St. Petersburg to Sarasota. The Skyway pier is great for night fishing, so grab a pole, and let me know if you see any ghost.

skyway accidents