Cinderblock slices through roof of Bronx MTA bus

HIGH BRIDGE, Bronx (WABC) -- A cinderblock smashed through a bus, leaving a Bronx man injured, but lucky to be alive.

Demere McClelland never saw it coming.

"I'm just grateful I am alive," Demere McClelland said. "Thank God."

Sunday night, as the 19-year-old minded his own business on the BX13 bus heading home from playing basketball, a giant cinderblock smashed its way through the roof of the bus, sending shards of sheet metal right at his leg.

"People panicked," Demere McClelland said. "People looked out the hole and one man said they were gunshots and everyone just got down."

"I heard a big boom," said John Felder, an eyewitness. "I didn't know what it was, scared the hell out of me."

Investigators are trying to figure out where the cinderblock came from; it's one of two that either were thrown or fell from a nearby building as the bus passed 168th St. and Ogden Ave. in the High Bridge section.

Felder says he looked up to see a second cinderblock bounce off the bus and land steps away, on the sidewalk. One piece cracked an apartment window.

Demere's mother says she hopes it wasn't intentional.

"We're talking about 9 o'clock at night. Who's on the roof? Who would do something like that, it's crazy," Danielle McClelland said. "You're not safe."

Police are searching through surveillance video from the neighborhood.

"Who would do something like that? You threw a concrete brick off the top of the building, why would you even do a thing like that?" Demere McClelland said. "If I was sitting closer I could have really died. You would have really taken a life."

Demere McClelland needed stitches on his leg, where the shards of metal sliced through his skin, but police say he is fortunate to be alive.