School bus smashes into Brooklyn businesses after driver jumped curb in Prospect Lefferts Gardens
NEW YORK -- Brooklyn families are out of their homes and two small business owners are picking up the pieces after a school bus crashed into their building Friday.
Prospect Lefferts Gardens residents woke up to the alarming scene.
Surveillance video shows the school bus jumping the curb and slamming into Yeimmy's Beauty Salon just before 4 a.m.
"I gotta start from scratch. I lost everything, everything," said Yeimmy Valera, the salon's owner.
No one was inside the salon and there were no passengers on the bus when it crashed.
Police said the bus driver and another driver both thought they had the right of way, which led the bus driver to hop the curb.
"This is my dream. So I brought my dream to life, now I'm here with it," said Tiffany Waddell, owner of Blends By Us.
Valera's salon opened just before the pandemic. Blends By Us opened a few months later.
"I want to cry. I want to break down. I don't know what to do. Like you made it through COVID and now you have a bus that comes in from out of nowhere and you don't know what to do," said Waddell.
The Department of Buildings said a column in the building was displaced and caused a bathroom and kitchen floor on a second-level apartment to drop slightly. A full vacate order was issued and the Red Cross offered emergency relocation to residents.
Police said no one was hurt.
"Having businesses like that affected by some random chance accident, it definitely impacts them and it impacts the people around us," said Jonathan Dallard.
The building is temporarily being propped up to safely remove the bus, which the business owners said could take about a week.
Domino Bus Services said it's waiting for more information from the investigation before commenting.