SAD BEYOND WORDS

‘Oh, my God! Help!’ Brooklyn man witnesses wife’s death as she’s run over by bus
By LORENA MONGELLI and REBECCA HARSHBARGER
Last Updated: 8:11 AM, January 26, 2013

A doting husband kissed his wife goodbye — then helplessly watched as a bus ran her over yesterday in Brooklyn, authorities said.
It was a freezing morning, and Michael Ferguson, 55, didn’t want his wife, Lorraine, to be cold as she waited a few blocks from her Canarsie home for an express bus to her job in Manhattan.
He drove her to Avenue K and East 105th Street, and they waited in the car until Lorraine, 47, spotted the BM2 about a block away shortly before 7:15 a.m.
When she began to cross the street to go to the bus stop, Ferguson said, he watched in horror as a private white bus blew through a stop sign while turning onto East 105th Street and smashed into his wife. She died at the scene.
“We said goodbye, and we kissed,” Ferguson said. “Had he stopped for one second, my wife would still be alive. My wife didn’t have a chance.”
Neighbors said he began screaming, “Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Somebody help!”
Tanzania Martin, 22, heard the crash and ran over.
“I saw the woman under the bus. Her head was smashed,” she said. “She was totally gone. The bus driver never came out. I had to go in and ask, ‘Are you OK?’ He said yes.”
The bus was carrying two handicapped children. They were not injured and were placed on a different bus.
When members of the Medical Examiner’s Office pulled his wife’s body out from beneath the bus, Ferguson collapsed on the street and began weeping.
Police said that no criminality was suspected and that the driver stayed on the scene but that the investigation was ongoing.
“What he did was criminal, and he needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Ferguson said. “He didn’t even have the common decency to get out of the car and see what he hit. I witnessed the whole thing.”
The couple, who were together for 22 years, had two sons, Anthony, 30, who’s in the Army, and Matthew, 21.
Their home was flooded during Hurricane Sandy, and they were repairing the damage, according to Ferguson.
He said he rescued a neighbor during the storm from drowning in her basement.
“I saved a life during Sandy, and now my wife was taken from me,” he said.
Rides Unlimited, which is based in Islandia, LI, owns the bus. The company provides transportation for