A disabled woman was left in tears after a bus driver humiliated her in front of an entire bus-load of people.
Kirsty Shepherd, 34, from Wakefield, attempted to board an Arriva bus travelling from Wakefield to Leeds on 23 January but was not allowed on by the driver, who said that the wheelchair space was being taken up by a pushchair.
The woman with the pushchair even offered to move it to make space for Ms Shepherd, but instead the driver refused to let her on.
He then terminated his route to call his manager, causing the other passengers to shout abuse at Ms Shepherd.
This comes only two weeks after a supreme court ruled that bus drivers needed to do more to accommodate wheelchair users. The case was brought by Doug Paulley, from Wetherby near Leeds, after an incident in Leeds when a mother with a buggy refused to move out of the allocated wheelchair space on a bus, meaning that he could not get on.
Kirsty has chronic Lyme disease, which is a debilitating illness comprising of many different illnesses and symptoms. She struggles to walk because of the disease which she contracted from a tick bite in 2014.
She described the incident with the bus driver as "the worst 15 minutes of her life". She claims that when the driver temporarily terminated the journey, he told passengers to "blame her for the inconvenience".
She said: "While the driver was talking with his manager, most of the people on the bus were screaming and shouting and berating me, shouting things like: 'Can't you just catch the next one?', 'You're holding everybody up,' and 'We want to get home tonight'."
If this humiliating and distressing experience wasn't enough, she was then forced to wait for the next bus, which didn't arrive until over 40 minutes later.
This bus also had a pushchair on it, but this time the driver let her on the bus. She said: "I got on to the right and the woman with the pram got on to the left, and there were no issues or words from the bus driver."
Mr Paulley called this case "shameful" on his Twitter account, and said to the BBC: "On her bus there was a buggy space, so there were two separate spaces. When that lady with the pushchair moved into the buggy space that space was free and available, so I don't know why the driver didn't let her on."
Kirsty's 40-minute wait in the cold January weather caused her to be very ill the next day. She said: "I spent the rest of the day at home in bed distraught, sobbing my heart out and in pain, struggling to warm my legs and hands up. I didn't manage to get to sleep and I couldn't get out of bed the next day."
Jon Croxford, area managing director at Arriva, said: "Our customer service team have had extensive conversations with Ms Shepherd about the incident and we are investigating this as a matter of urgency.
"We are in the process of downloading the CCTV footage and speaking to those involved. We have promised to conclude this investigation swiftly.
"All of our drivers receive disability training as standard and we take our obligations extremely seriously. We will take any necessary steps required following the conclusion of our full internal investigation."
We hope this situation gets resolved for Kirsty soon!
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