I don’t mean for this post to scare anyone. I’m not trying to be the local news, spreading fear around the village. I’m just reporting on where I was and what happened to me. On Monday the 2nd of March I was on MUNI, line 27 (that’s the SF bus system for those of you who don’t know), with my friend and colleague Thomas Knoll. We were talking about work when the world decided it was time to change subjects and had someone shot at our bus.

EXT:JONES AND ELLIS

So the first problem with my story and my journalism is that this is only my perspective, which I can tell in about a sentence. I hear a pop, we stop abruptly, bus driver yells “fuck”, we drive about 20 more feet, quickly, bus driver yells something like “oh shit”, jumps out of his little bus driver booth onto the floor, a passenger runs to the back of the bus and dives to the ground, everyone on the bus dives to the ground.

That really doesn’t tell you much. Everything else kinda has to be assumed and or made up. For example at one point when we’re all laying on the ground with our heads covered a passenger asks the bus driver if he’s all right:

Guy “Hey bus driver, are you all right”
Bus Driver: “Yeah -is everyone else alright”?
Passengers as a collective “Yeah”
1st guy: “Think you can drive us out of here”?

Remember at this point all of us are still on the ground covering our heads.

Bus Driver “You Fucking drive us out of here, we’re being shot at”.

So at this point Im on the ground because I heard a pop, the bus driver slammed on the breaks, jumped out of his cubical. I never saw anyone with a gun, or a bullet hole anywhere.

I did see a guy laying on the ground when we got off the bus, about 4 police officers around him, and one was cutting his shirt off, which I assume was to stop bleeding from a bullet wound. Now comes the second craziest part (the first being that we were on a bus that was supposedly shot at). By the time we get off the bus at least 4 cop cars are already there, our bus is already being taped off with the magical do not pass this line, protective, yellow caution tape – and a police officer tells everyone to leave the scene. Basically for all we know there is a shooter on the loose, and he wants us to walk through the Tenderloin away from where all the police are. That didn’t sound safe, and it didn’t sound fun, we did it anyway.

I shoot video for a living, but right now I’d like to present to you some of the worst footage I have ever taken in my life, I guess I would be a pretty horrible war time camera man. Below is the footage that I took from laying on the floor.