Woman Who Was Uppercut By Cleveland Bus Driver Speaks, More Details Revealed

By: Amanda Anderson-Niles

The young woman who was seen in a disturbing video getting uppercut by a bus driver in Cleveland, Ohio has been identified. The young woman is 25 year old Shi’dea Lane. And according to the police report filed regarding the altercation that occurred between her and the bus driver, Lane has been identified by multiple witnesses as the aggressor. The same witnesses say that the video did not capture completely that Lane spat in bus driver Artis Hughes’ face several times, and also hit him first. Hughes stated in the police report that he was only defending himself from the young woman. He even claims that she boarded his bus without paying, saying to him, “I left my book bag.”

Here’s the excerpt of the police report, courtesy of The Smoking Gun:

Hughes said that after Lane, a restaurant employee, eventually paid her fare, she told him, “You a B-tch and Your Momma’s a B-tch Too!” She also reportedly stated, “Keep talking about me and I will spit on you!”

In a written statement, Hughes recalled that Lane “grabbed me in the throat and spit on me in the face.” In response, the driver said he stopped the bus, “and I protected myself.” The Hughes statement does not reveal that he hit Lane squarely in the jaw with a bolo punch that knocked her to the ground.

One witness told cops that a “drunk” Lane “got on the bus flipping out” and “started talking crazy” to Hughes. After spitting on Hughes, the witness wrote in a statement, the driver “did what he had to do.”

A second witness wrote that Lane was “loud and obnoxious” from the start, and spit on Hughes and “started hitting him.” The witness added, “That’s when he hit her back.” A third witness described Lane as “drunk” and reported that “she hit him and he jumped out of his seat and started fighting her.”

When first interviewed by cops, Hughes said he was willing to prosecute Lane. But a week after the incident, he called a police detective to report that he “did not wish to pursue prosecution of the female suspect.” He subsequently signed a “Refuse to Prosecute Form.”

Lane was not arrested at the scene. In fact, following the confrontation, she was transported to the restaurant where she works by police officers.

The Smoking Gun also learned from Lane’s Facebook profile that she was shot and stabbed in the face a few years ago. These events left marks on her face, and Hughes is heard on the video making fun of these said face markings:

According to her Facebook page, Lane, the mother of a four-year-old girl, loves “2 go to church,” and considers herself “a people person.” In a May posting, Lane wrote that she was trying to get “famous and rich,” and referred to “being shot and stabbed in ma face,” which “prolly messed me up from tryin to model.”

Seven years ago, Lane was shot four times during a robbery at the home of a male friend. During the bus fight, Lane’s injuries from the stabbing prompted Hughes to comment, “Look like somebody done sliced your face up.”

We also took a peep at her Facebook profile, and although there was no mention of the incident on her account, by pictures, it’s clear that the young woman is also a mother. We really hope that both she and Hughes will be able to both move on from this and learn from the events that transpired.

But if a recent video is any indicator, it looks like the young woman might have learned to walk away from altercations. She claims in an interview with Fox News that she’s still in shock that a man could hit a woman so hard. And she’d do things a lot differently now. Here’s the interview: