‘Ma’am, do you need an ambulance?’ Footage details brutal CATS bus assault
When a woman ran onto a CATS bus in April in an attempt to get away from her assailant, she instead found herself cornered by the man.
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When the man began punching and kicking the 22-year-old woman repeatedly, she found herself alone after the bus driver and other passengers darted off the bus.
And when the man walked off the bus, getting into a white SUV and taking off, the woman he had just brutally beaten found herself struggling to stand and put back on her shoes.
Charlotte police have not said if the man in the video has been arrested or charged.
The April 10 assault in the 400 block of Centre Street, in northwest Charlotte, was caught on bus security footage, showing what happened before, during and after the assault inside and outside the bus.
The Charlotte Observer made a request for the footage from the Charlotte Area Transit System under N.C. public records law on April 14. But the request wasn’t fulfilled until nearly three months later, on Friday, July 10, after the Observer’s attorney, Benjamin Leighton, reached out to CATS.
An unnamed CATS spokesperson said in an email that the video “was released as quickly as possible following review and security and safety approvals.”
The Observer reviewed the video but is opting not to publish it because of its graphic nature.
The footage, timestamped just before 8 a.m., showed a bus driver and passengers sitting at a stop with the door open.
A few moments later, a woman in a pink jacket ran through the front door past the driver, finding a seat near other passengers. A man, wearing a denim jacket, followed. He stood over the woman, pointing and yelling at her to get off the bus.
“You need to take this off the bus,” someone said. The man turned his attention back to the woman he followed onto the bus.
The audio can be difficult to hear at times. But the woman, with her arms crossed and repeatedly shaking her head, told the man no when he told her to exit the bus. The man, about a minute after they boarded the bus, punched the woman in the head.
The other passengers and the bus driver exited the bus. Someone yelled “stop” as the passengers cleared the bus.
“Get my bag,” one passenger said to another who reached past the man to grab a bag off of a seat before walking off. Footage from outside the bus shows them standing down the sidewalk.
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With the bus emptied, the man grabbed the woman’s head, punching and kicking her repeatedly, and stomping on her head, yelling “f— you.” Her shoes came off her feet and her ponytail unfurled after he grabbed her head.
The bus driver peeked her head through the front door of the bus to see the man assaulting the woman before running out again.
A Charlotte-Mecklenburg police report said she was knocked unconscious during the assault. In the video, the woman appeared to be still for a moment after he kicked her in the head.
She laid on the ground moaning, crying and disoriented as the man walked off the bus. In footage from outside the bus, a white SUV pulled up, and a man stepped out. He walked up to the man who assaulted the woman before both got into the vehicle and drove off.
The woman was left alone on the bus for nearly two minutes, according to timestamps, as she struggled to sit up and then stand. She managed to get up in a bus seat.
“Ma’am, do you need an ambulance?” the bus driver asked. “Just hold tight, they’re on the way.”
The woman struggled to speak and stand but said she was fine.
“I’m ok,” the woman said.
The bus driver apologized to the woman before she used a phone connected to the inside of the bus to call someone.
“I need an ambulance,” the driver said into the bus phone, a cell phone in her hand.
The assaulted woman, barefoot, stood and grabbed her shoes. After multiple attempts, she finally put her shoes on and walked off the bus at 8:05 a.m. The bus driver again asked if she wanted to wait for an ambulance, but the woman declined.
Videos from outside the bus showed the woman walk up the sidewalk and out of view. Several minutes later, a Charlotte Fire Department engine pulled up to the scene, but drove off shortly after.
The bus sat empty until a few minutes after 8:20 a.m. when a CMPD officer and a CATS employee in a yellow vest arrived. Both spoke with the bus driver.
Crime on public transit is rare. But a February Charlotte Observer investigation found violent incidents were more likely to occur on buses rather than light rail trains, and that bus drivers were especially susceptible.
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