Bristol flare attack bus driver thought she was blind

"I was frightened, very frightened, there was pain in my eyes and I thought I was going to be blind."

A bus driver who was temporarily blinded last month when a passenger threw a lit flare in her face, is back behind the wheel of a bus in Bristol.

Anita Nicholls, 53, said she now has to wear glasses to drive after her "corneas were burnt" in the incident on a bus in Union Street in December.

She said: "I was frightened, very frightened, there was pain in my eyes and I thought I was going to be blind."

A 14-year-old boy was arrested but later released under investigation.

Ms Nichols said she had just started her shift when a "young lad" said he thought he had left his phone on the top deck of the bus.

"I just happened to glance up in the cameras and there he was setting off what I believed to be a flare," she said.

"All flames were coming out of this huge tube and within a minute, the whole bus was completely full of smoke."

The offender got on to the bus on Bristol's Union Street

Worried the biomethane gas-powered bus would "blow up" she said she tried "to get him off the bus". It was at this point he threw the flare in her face.

"I couldn't see for nearly two minutes which seemed like forever," she said.

"I was frightened, very frightened and there was pain in my eyes and I thought am I going to be blind."

But just four weeks after the incident, she has returned to work.

"I am nervous but I'm just trying to get on with it, to be honest," she said.

Ms Nicholls said she now has to wear glasses to drive and bright sunlight hurts her eyes following the incident

James Freeman, managing director of First West of England, said "attacks like this" are rare.

"People like Anita, are public servants," he said.

"They're out there doing it day-after-day for the people of this part of the world and they don't expect to be mistreated in that way."

A 14-year-old boy was arrested on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm with intent and released under investigation.