Metro rider arrested after falling asleep on the bus with a gun

Traffic was shut down and a SWAT team was sent to Glendale on Monday morning after a Metro bus driver found a sleeping passenger with a gun.

Bus drivers were changing shifts at San Fernando and West Los Feliz roads about 9:44 a.m. when one of them “spotted a gun in a sleeping passenger’s waist band” and notified law enforcement, Metro officials said. Glendale police arrived within minutes and escorted other passengers off the bus while Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies took the armed passenger into custody, said Sgt. Vahe Abramyan, a public information officer at the Glendale Police Department.

The intersection was reopened by noon.

In a statement thanking the bus driver, Metro reminded the public that its policies “strictly prohibit carrying dangerous weapons on the Metro system, whether concealed or visible.”

This isn’t the first time police have been called to respond to a report of a sleeping Metro passenger carrying a gun. Last year, LAPD used its controversial robot dog to communicate with a passenger who had dozed off with a suspected firearm. In that case, it turned out to be a BB gun.

Staff writer Nathan Solis contributed to this report.