Ritchies dismissed the driver after an investigation. He took the company to the ERA which has now ruled against him. Photo: Supplied / NZME
A distressed man held on to the side of a bus as it drove off, trying to stop the driver from leaving after begging him to call the police on several passengers he claimed had stolen his phone.
The driver, Fereti Fuimaono, accelerated his bus away from the bus stop, pulling the man along before he lost his grip and fell to the road where he ended up underneath the bus, according to a recently released Employment Relations Authority ruling.
Fuimaono stopped the bus and a member of the public pulled the man on to the footpath.
According to the ruling, Fuimaono then opened the doors, looked at the man who appeared to be unconscious and then closed the doors and drove off. He did not report the incident to his bus depot call centre, seek police assistance, get off the bus to check the condition of the prone man or call for an ambulance.
Near the end of his route, later that evening, Fuimaono was contacted and interviewed by the police.
The man who had fallen under the bus was reportedly in hospital with injuries that police believed were stab wounds.
That incident unfolded at a bus stop in Takanini and was recorded from multiple angles by CCTV.
Following an investigation by his employer, Ritchies Murray Transport Solutions, Fuimaono was dismissed from his job.
However, Fuimaono wanted his job back and made a claim to the Employment Relations Authority that he'd been unfairly dismissed from his role.
At a hearing held earlier this year, CCTV footage from the evening in September 2022 was played to the authority.
In that footage, a distressed man can be seen getting on to the bus and telling Fuimaono that several people who had just got on had stolen his cellphone. One of those passengers then threw the man on to the footpath.
Over the next few minutes, the man, who claimed he'd been mugged, attempted to get on to the bus to stop it from leaving. He was thrown off the bus a further four times by the alleged thieves who also allegedly assaulted him by kicking and punching him.
In one instance Fuimaono could be seen standing up from his driver's seat and attempting to usher the man off the bus. When the man would not move, Fuimaono wrapped his arms around the man and moved him to the door where the man then fell on to the pavement.
As he was moved, the man could be heard on the audio track of the on-board camera recording asking Fuimaono to "please call the police".
After that, two of the alleged thieves got off the bus, held the other man down on the pavement until Fuimaono signalled he was about to leave and then got back on.
It was at this point as Fuimaono pulled away that the man held on to the doors, before ending up under the bus. The authority's ruling doesn't suggest Fuimaono ran the man over.
The decision says Fuimaono used his corded handset to dial the bus depot call centre but no one picked up. He didn't attempt to call emergency services or check on the man.
The company then launched an investigation into the incident and found that Fuimaono failed to follow the procedure for reporting violent incidents, as well as its procedure for stopping to help someone who may have been run over, before firing him.
The ERA says in its decision that following that dismissal, Fuimaono lodged a personal grievance stating that a manager at the company had told him if he resigned he would be hired back once any publicity about the incident had died down. However, Ritchies denies making that agreement and no evidence of it was produced to the authority.
The authority convened earlier this year for a hearing to decide whether Ritchies had been fair in firing Fuimaono.
A manager for Ritchies told the authority that Fuimaono had given no reasonable explanation for why he called neither emergency services nor the depot after the incident. Nor did he explain why he didn't check if the man was okay or report what had happened to a supervisor.
That manager noted that Fuimaono knew the policies and had called the depot just three days prior to report a woman had come on to his bus crying and claiming a man had been following her.
Despite Fuimaono resigning three days after the incident the company continued its investigation and formally dismissed him from employment in October 2022.
Fuimaono said what he saw was a drunken scuffle occur between a group of people and another man and he didn't see him get stabbed.
He also claimed he didn't know he'd been dismissed until his final payslip, despite the company having hand-delivered it to his address.
In his evidence to the authority, he said he knew he was supposed to stop after the man had been pulled from underneath the bus and called emergency services.
Authority member Robin Arthur said the video provided "compelling evidence" that the company had a reasonable basis for finding Fuimaono's lack of action amounted to serious misconduct.
"He did not use the company's emergency call code or call 111 in a situation where a person trying to board the bus, albeit with the purpose of delaying its departure, was repeatedly punched, kicked and pushed to the ground by the group of other passengers," Arthur said.
Ultimately, Arthur found that the company's decision to dismiss Fuimaono was fair and reasonable.
Ritchies said through its counsel that the ruling spoke for itself and declined to comment further.
Fuimaono has been approached for comment.
* This story was first published by the New Zealand Herald.