Shock as passenger dies on bus

A passenger on a bus service from Hastings suffered a suspected heart attack and died.

Emergency services were called to a bus depot in Napier yesterday after a passenger on a service from Hastings suffered a suspected heart attack and died.

For one of the passengers on the bus, Napier man Devon Miller, it was "pretty unsettling and very sad".

It was Mr Miller who first became aware something was not right.

He got aboard the bus at the Dalton St depot after it had arrived and sat behind the middle-aged man, who he said was not moving and whose head was leaning back.

"I heard later he had got on at the hospital. I saw his head was right back and he didn't look right."

Mr Miller said he reached out and touched the man, tapping him several times, but there was no response.

"There was nothing at all."

He quickly approached the driver, who immediately called up for help and drove the short distance to the medical centre in Wellesley St.

Mr Miller stayed on the bus and said police and St John Ambulance were quick to the scene, with the man taken from the bus and placed nearby on the footpath, where he was worked on for a short time. "But he had passed away."

A screen was put up around the man's body until arrangements were made with next of kin and a funeral director.

The death had been reported at noon and police were able to open up the immediate area about an hour later.