Attacker On Loose; Bus Driver Uneasy

Election Day may have been rough for a lot of people, but few had it as bad as CT Transit driver Tamika Walker-Fernandez — after a violent passenger refused to get off her bus.

Walker-Fernandez had driven a bus for eight years without incident. But when the passenger boarded her D bus on Dixwell Avenue between Lake Place and Bristol Street, she experienced terror.

“The man was getting on my bus,” she recalled in an interview, while her husband and fellow bus driver Marlon Fernandez looked on. ​“He wasn’t ready [to pay his fare], and I asked him to come back up when he was ready.”

She said she wasn’t asking him to get off the bus, just to move behind the yellow line so that she could get the bus moving to the next stop while he got his fare together.

“He started to curse at me,” she said. ​“So I stopped the bus and told him to get off. And he didn’t move. He just stood there.”

Then, she said, he gathered the saliva in his mouth and spit. It landed on the side of her face as stunned passengers watched. The petite Fernandez grabbed the only thing she could — her travel coffee mug — to defend herself as the man attempted to punch her. His punch connected with her left wrist, fracturing it. She was able to get out of her seat and run to the center of the bus.

Passengers jumped up to help her, making the man get off the bus.

Walker-Fernandez said she called the transit supervisor and police for help. She also called her husband, who was just leaving the bus depot in Hamden.

“My first thought was, ​‘I’m going to kill him,’” Fernandez said of the assailant.

But getting the man off the bus wasn’t the end. As Walker-Fernandez waited for help, the man returned. This time he returned not spitting or trying to hit her with his hands, but hurling bricks at her as she tried to keep him out by shutting the door, she said. While he didn’t hit her, another passenger was hit with a brick. Other passengers jumped in to stop the man. He ultimately escaped from the bus.

For the past two weeks Walker-Fernandez has been out of work. She said she worries that bus drivers might unknowingly pick up the person and not know he was the person who tried to attack her, or that he might do the same to another driver. The New Haven Police Department is investigating the attack. CT Transit has put out a notice with still shots of the alleged attacker from on-board bus video.

But Walker-Fernandez and her husband said they are concerned that there had been no effort to disseminate the attacker’s pictures beyond bus employees, and thus little opportunity of finding the guy. Walker-Fernandez said she was disturbed that between the police and CT Transit there has been very little contact and the times she has reached out she feels she been treated more like a nuisance rather than a victim. She has since written letter to Interim Chief Police Anthony Campbell.

Ralph Buccitti of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 281 complained about her treatment in an email sent last week to CT Transit General Manager David Lee.

“What is disturbing to me is that since last week, nobody has followed up with the victim,” Buccitti wrote. ​“Management has been mute. They have onboard video and still photos of this individual. A notice has been posted at the garage with the person’s picture. Employees are informed to contact dispatch who will contact the police. Well two days after the attack dispatch was notified that this person was in the downtown New Haven area. The police were not called. What is the protocol?”

Lee said in an email to the New Haven Independent that because the investigation is ongoing, he can’t comment about specifics. But he said like any such incident, it is being taken seriously, and CT Transit is cooperating with the police in its efforts to apprehend and prosecute the assailant.

“Happily, assaults against bus operators are rare,” Lee wrote. ​“But even one assault against an operator is one too many.”

Lee went on to point out that bus operators are in radio communication with a transit dispatcher at all times. In the event of any emergency the dispatcher is notified and a call also is made to local law enforcement if necessary.

“The system also allows an operator to send a priority emergency signal without speaking into the radio,” Lee wrote. ​“Most New Haven buses are now equipped with a suite of intelligent transportation systems (ITS) that includes GPS tracking. All of our buses in New Haven will have this technology installed by early next month. This allows the dispatcher to pinpoint the location of a bus signaling an emergency and provide that information to law enforcement. That is exactly what happened in the case of the recent incident you inquired about.”

In addition to those systems, buses are equipped with on-board video surveillance, which allowed for the video and clear photos of the assailant that were provided to police and posted as a notice to all operators and street supervisors.

“Our first concern is to ensure that any employee who suffers an assault receives immediate medical attention if needed,” Lee further wrote. ​“Referral to the Employee Assistance Program may also be appropriate. If the assailant is apprehended and the employee wishes to press charges, there are many ways we (and, I should add, the employee’s union) can offer support, such as providing time off to attend hearings, accompanying the employee, and corresponding with the prosecutor. ”

Assaulting a public safety officer, emergency medical personnel or public transit employee is a Class C felony, punishable by up to ten years in jail and a $10,000 fine. But Walker-Fernandez said she has since learned from an attorney that it could be difficult to prosecute the person who attacked her because he was able to get away. She said she’s been told that even if she see her attacker on the street, a warrant would have to be sworn for his arrest.

Marlon Fernandez said they decided share their story so that people can keep an eye out for the man.

“We just wanted to do what we can so it doesn’t happen to anyone else,” he said.