Father of two who drove a Culver City bus for over 12 years shot after refusing to make a stop in traffic

Bruce Rodriguez was a Culver City bus driver in California with 12 years of experience at the job. On October 1, 2026, according to the prosecutors, a passenger shot him at the wheel over a stop he couldn’t make in traffic.

Rodriguez, 42, was married to Sandy Sanchez and the couple had two sons, a 3-year-old and a 6-month-old. At about 5 p.m. on the aforementioned date, his bus was on South Centinela Avenue in heavy traffic. Prosecutors claim 55-year-old Jose Antonio Zayas came up to him and asked him to stop so he could get out. According to the news release by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, Zayas asked Rodriguez to pull over, but between the traffic and where the bus sat in the road, he couldn’t do as he was asked.

At that point, Zayas allegedly drew a handgun and shot Rodriguez several times, proceeding to lift his bicycle off the bus’s front rack and leave. Rodriguez was still in the driver’s seat when officers arrived at the scene, per NBC Los Angeles. He was taken to a hospital, where he was later pronounced dead.

Prosecutors aren’t treating this as an ordinary murder case

Culver City shut down all CityBus service for the weekend and arranged crisis support for its staff. “We have lost a deeply valued member of our City family to a senseless act of violence,” Mayor Freddy Puza said in a statement, per Law&Crime. Hundreds of people came to a vigil on October 3. “For 12 years, he worked hard for the city of Culver City as a bus driver,” his wife Sanchez said.

Within a day of the incident, the police had Zayas in custody. On October 6, Zayas was charged with one count of murder, with a special circumstance allegation of murder of transportation personnel, a firearm-use allegation, and a separate count of being a felon with a gun. He is still being held without bail as of writing.

At a City Hall news conference on October 7, Los Angeles City Councilmember Traci Park put the 2025 tally of attacks on transit operators at no fewer than 72. She called the killing of Rodriguez “a senseless and brutal act.”

It’s worth noting that under California Penal Code 190.25, a law added in 1982 that lists bus drivers among the transportation workers it protects, the special circumstances applies only if the killing was intentional, Rodriguez was on duty, and Zayas knew or reasonably should’ve known he was a transit worker.

If a jury convicts Zayas of first-degree murder and finds the special circumstances true, the sentence is life in prison with no prospect of release on parole.