Posted on 04/25/2011 8:28:19 AM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
The woman was heading to to Anacostia on Saturday when she noticed a group of people at the L'Enfant Plaza Metro station acting a bit unruly. They were punching the cars, she says, spooking the passengers inside. Through the ruckus, the woman kept moving to catch a green line train. That scene alone might be enough to rattle Metro passengers, but on this night, it was hardly the worst of it.
The young woman, who didn’t want her name used in this report, on Sunday described a commuters’ nightmare — a rowdy mess at L'Enfant, followed by a scary confrontation inside a Metro car and finally violent beatings outside a station. The entire affair, she says, happened in a single trip.
“It just seemed like the problem was never-ending,” she says. “From Point A to B to C, it just never stopped."
There’s no incident report from the beating, a Metro spokesperson said in an e-mail. That’s because authorities were called to the Anacostia station Saturday night but when they arrived, there were no victims or suspects to interview.
“Metro Transit Police were called,” wrote WMATA spokesperson Cathy Asato. “but found nothing when they got to the station.”
Here’s what happened on the green line train, according to the witness: A group of boys — a separate group than the bunch that originally caused concern earlier in L'Enfant — was aboard the train bound for Branch Avenue. The witness wasn’t sitting in the middle of the car; she watched from a seat closer to the doors. The boys were harassing a small group of girls, she says. A bottle was thrown, other passengers looked fearful. The woman was worried too, but she wasn’t sure what to do. There was a box cutter with her and an emergency call button in the car. She focused on the tool instead of the call box, she says, because she didn’t want the boys’ attention or ire.
"I don’t know how the call boxes work,” she says. “I don't know if you press it and it makes a noise."
A few passengers ditched the train, and another woman with a baby had to tell the boys to stay away from her stroller, the woman says. When they reached the Anacostia station, the boys got off of the car, but not before throwing the liquid from the bottle at a girl. The woman also got off the train at Anacostia, leaving the car at the same time as a man who was also bothered by what he saw.
“He was like, ‘This is a shame and I knew this was gonna happen,’” she says. “I guess stuff like this happens all the time? I don't know. I've only been riding the Metro for about a week."
To recap, the woman has already witnessed punched cars and passenger assaults in just a few stops. Her night wasn’t over yet, though. Outside the Anacostia stop, she found the boys from aboard the train beating a girl whom she previously noticed inside the station. This girl, a different victim than the woman from the train, was being pummeled by about seven to nine people.
"She fell over and every guy that was standing out there hit her,” the woman says. “And she was just defenseless. She was just guarding her head. They were punching her and kicking her in the head."
Another witness spotted the attack from the parking lot and says she called police and emergency responders to the scene.
“Her shirt was pulled over her head and there were men punching her in the face ... no one was coming to her aid,” the witness says.
The attack is the latest in a string of unsettling Metro incidents. In January, a man was brutally beaten at the L’Enfant Plaza station. That assault was captured on video. Not long after that, another man said he was jumped at the Suitland Metro station. He lost two teeth when a mob of teenagers beat him as an apparent act of retaliation for attempting to call 911 and report another incident, according to an NBC4 report.
"I'm not going to ride the subway," that victim, Robert Joy, told NBC4. "Not even a Metrobus. I'll be safer in a cab."
The second witness to Saturday’s attack, who also says she no also longer rides Metro, said the District’s transit system was “too unexpected,” and “too chaotic” for her. She described Saturday's scene as “anarchy,” and wondered why authorities weren’t reviewing cameras or proactively posting themselves at stations where trouble has cropped up before.
"I feel like I can get kicked out of Metro for eating french fries,” she says, “but someone could assault me in the Metro and that's OK."
The same urban youths who turn Georgetown into a hell-hole on Friday nights and other events, like Halloween.
Yeah. Guess which part of town this is. Where was the Metro security? Every time (admittedly rarely) I’ve been on a Metro car east of Capitol South there have been one or more security guys on board. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
It seems that the plaza is aptly named.
Dc Metro Green Line again, and all that THAT implies.
The best deterrent other than security guys is concealed carry...let these little bastidges wonder about who might be able to dispatch them to the afterlife in a matter of seconds.
DC Metro needs a Bernhard Goetz who’ll put some heads to bed.
Where’s Bernie Goetz when you need him?
This summer is going to be a bad one. The natives are definitely restless, and at some point they will encounter someone who doesn’t have to put with their crap. And that may step everything up a notch or two.
This is DC. It took a Supreme Court decision for people there to get part of their 2nd Amendment rights recognized.
Bingo. This pretty much sums up the police enforcement in the DC metro system. The Cops don't want to do any work, or put themselves at any risk, so they bother the regular working folks with any and every violation on the books, but steer clear of any places where they might have to break up groups, or have to do any extra paperwork.
I know lots of people who refuse to ride the metro except for a couple stops.
Metro Police apparently get off work at 5:00 p.m. And oh yeah...there was a story out not too long ago about the metro’s cameras mostly being in a permanent “out of order” state.
Yeah, Anacostia station. That is where a lot of the Amish get off.
A good case for concealed carry. I’m going to jump off a cliff here and take a wild guess that we are talking about a certain “demographic”.
Is that the one at the end of the line in miserable Maryland?
If that Communist would-be dictator had his way, Obama would force everyone to ride public transport instead of those evil gas-guzzling cars.
Yep. "Green Line" in DC is a code word for the demographic which must not be named...
Towards the end , after you get over the river.
“Yep. “Green Line” in DC is a code word for the demographic which must not be named...”
I hear ya. Same unnamed demographic here in Atlanta shook up a MARTA train last week and beat the snot out of 2 Delta employees on their way to the airport.
I knew when they started working on that line it would be bad. They just made the worst part of town mobile.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.