FLUSHING, Queens — One of the men who died Monday when a city bus and a charter bus collided in Queens was killed after a spur of the moment decision to walk to work.
Henry Wdowiak, a 68-year-old building maintenance worker, usually took the bus and train to work, but his decision to walk to work Monday put him in the wrong place at the wrong time Monday morning.
He was pinned by one of the buses and his wife – Halina Kurpiewska – now has the grim task of planning for her husband’s funeral.
“He was already retired, but still going to work,” Kurpiewska told her son Marcin, who translated. “He was a military man. He was a pilot in Poland.”
Wdowiak was one of three men killed. Gregory Liljefors, 55, was a passenger on the MTA bus. Raymond Mong, 49, was behind the wheel of the charter bus.
Seventeen other people suffered various injuries, from bumps and bruises to broken ribs.
Residents and local officials say Main Street and Northern Boulevard in Flushing is known as a dangerous intersection. It’s a priority under Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Vision Zero initiative.
Police are focusing their investigation on Mong, the charter bus driver. Sources say he was fired from a job at the MTA two years ago.
