Man banned from Kitsap bus system killed while walking home

Matthew Little’s family says he might be alive today if he’d been allowed to ride the bus.

Little was killed earlier this month while walking home with groceries. He was banned from Kitsap Transit earlier this fall for constantly smelling of marijuana.

Related: Man banned from bus defends marijuana smell

“I know I can’t say that Kitsap Transit is responsible for my father’s death, but it certainly feels like it may have been prevented had they not decided to make the call to exclude him,” Little’s daughter, Jessica, told KIRO 7.

Jessica says Little was killed while trying to cross busy Highway 303 in Bremerton.

Kitsap Transit previously told KIRO 7 that Little was warned frequently about the marijuana smell. One bus driver reportedly gagged over it.

“She makes me gag,” Little told KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson after he was banned. “If I had been smelling like marijuana, and there’s a pretty good chance I was, she would put a hand over her face and lean toward the window. I’m 40 feet away in the back of the bus and she’s still putting on this grandiose act. They told me that bus driver has asthma and that it was really affecting her. Well, what the hell is she doing put her hand over both air passages if she has a problem breathing?”

Not long after he was banned from riding the bus, Little told Dori that bus drivers were “jumping on the bandwagon” against him, after some complaints. The transit organization allegedly he verbally abused one driver.

Little argued that he consumed large amounts of medical marijuana on a daily basis due to a spine condition. He would have consumed “a great deal more of narcotics” had it not been for marijuana.

Though some drivers complained, Little told Dori that others didn’t have a problem with him.

Kitsap Transit hasn’t commented.

Follow @https://twitter.com/mynorthwest