What we know about the fatal SEPTA bus driver shooting

On Thursday morning, a passenger on a Route 23 bus in Germantown shot and killed the 48-year-old bus driver, police said. The suspect, a 21-year-old Belmont woman, was charged with murder and related crimes in connection with the shooting.

Here’s what we know and don’t know.

Just before 10:30 a.m. Thursday, a passenger shot Bernard Gribbin six times, near Germantown and Abbotsford Avenues, police said. Police found Gribbin in the driver’s seat of the bus with gunshot wounds to his torso and throat and took him to Einstein Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead just minutes later, at 10:36 a.m.

Early indications were that the shooter may have shot Gribbin after a dispute, Interim First Deputy Commissioner Frank Vanore said. But SEPTA Transit Police Chief Charles Lawson said bus security footage did not appear to show any “substantive interaction” between the shooter and the driver.

The motive for the crimeis unclear, said Vanore. No weapon was recovered and no other injuries were reported.

Gribbin, of Abington, had been a SEPTA employee for 12 years, the transit authority said. At the time of his death, he was a bus driver on Route 23.

Shortly after Gribbin was killed, SEPTA called on the public for help in identifying the shooter and released screen captures from surveillance footage of the suspect.

The fatal shooting came amid contract negotiations between SEPTA and Transport Workers Union Local 234, which represents the authority’s bus, trolley, and subway operators. One of the central issues in negotiations was safety.

TWU Local 234 had beendemanding more law enforcement to combat a rising number of assaults on its members, and better protection for the public from crime and antisocial behavior on the transit system.

A strike was averted Friday, after SEPTA and the union reached a tentative agreement on a one-year contract.

Zhontay Capers, 21, of the 4300 block of Reno Avenue, has been charged with murder and other crimes, police said. It is unclear if she and the driver argued before the fatal shots were fired, police said.

Police say they do not know what prompted the shooting.

It is unclear whether any additional safety measures will be put in place on the transit system. As labor negotiations between SEPTA and the transit union continued Friday, union negotiators continued to demand a greater law enforcement presence to prevent additional assaults on their members.