Video obtained by the Scripps News Group in Detroit shows the moment two horses were allowed to briefly board a city bus over the weekend in an incident that has since gone viral on social media.
The video from inside the bus shows the driver making a stop near 7 Mile and Strasburg Street just after 5 p.m. Saturday as he’s taken aback by the horses waiting at the bus stop.
Watch the surveillance video from inside the Detroit bus in the video below:
“Hey, I see y’all my brothers. That’s what I’m talking about,” the driver can be heard saying in the surveillance video.
After a brief conversation, the driver then activates the bus wheelchair ramp and lets the horses, along with their owners.
“Hey, I won’t get in trouble. … It’s a service animal. It’s a service animal,” the bus driver can be heard saying.
The video from inside the bus then shows two men walking the horses through the empty bus before the bus detects movement and greets the horses and their owners with a “welcome aboard” message as the owners walk the horses off the bus.
“Y’all be good, man,” the bus driver can be heard saying as he closes the doors to the bus and starts to drive away from the bus stop.
The stunt, which quickly went viral on social media, left city officials with no option but to respond after Detroiters were left stunned by what they were seeing.
Detroit Department of Transportation officials said Thursday that after reviewing social media posts and the surveillance video from inside the bus, they could only acknowledge the incident raised safety concerns for both passengers and the horses.
WATCH | Horse owner responds after 2 horses board DDOT bus in Detroit, leaving passengers stunned:
In a statement, DDOT officials said that while they welcome service animals to ride alongside passengers when they meet ADA requirements, “it appears that these horses were brought on the bus for other reasons.”
“We recognize that the actions in the video were meant to draw awareness to a positive cause. And we also acknowledge that this presented safety concerns for other passengers on public transit and for the horses themselves."
City officials also said the incident will serve as an opportunity to “retrain all DDOT bus operators and to educate our Detroit residents on everything that we are doing to guarantee safe, timely and high-quality service through DDOT.”
When asked whether the driver involved faced disciplinary action, DDOT said it typically does not comment on personnel matters but confirmed only that the driver had been "spoken to."
After the incident gained widespread attention, the owner of the horses and co-founder of Urban City Cowboys, Jordan Williams, told the Scripps News Group in Detroit he brought the horses onto the bus as a way to draw attention to Black cowboys and urban equestrians.
This story was originally published by Óscar Contreras with the Scripps News Group in Detroit.
