A West Vancouver woman is raising safety concerns for passengers and transit drivers after she says she was brutally attacked following a weekend bus ride home.
“It’s totally shocking. The experience here is that it’s not about me, it’s about everyone living in Vancouver,” Karin Ericson told Global Neambs.
“This is a story about acceptance, almost, of the violence we are seeing.”
Ericson said the incident took place as she was heading home from watching The Lights Celebration at a friend’s house in Vancouver’s upmost end on Saturday.
After the fireworks, she boarded a blue bus heading towards the North Shore when a group of young men tried to board and clashed with the driver who did not want to let a young woman Board.
“It became a big scene, it was verbally abusive, both in tone and in language. She was very loud, shouting insults at the bus driver, threatening him, harassing him, threatening his job if he didn’t let her stay on the bus,” Ericson said.
Ericson said he pulled out his phone and started recording, out of concern that the situation could escalate.
The driver finally called for safety, who attended the scene and mediated the dispute. The bus eventually continued on its way with one of the security personnel on board, she said.
“At that point, one of my friends started verbally assaulting me, angry that I was making videos, and told me that I had no right to do this, I should have asked permission, that it was illegal, just in a very intimidating way,” she said.
The bus continued to the North Shore without incident, but Ericson said she felt intimidated by the group.
Ericson sat off the bus in the Park Royal bus loop, and was leaving when she was suddenly attacked.
“(I) took 10 to 15 steps and was completely blind, I’m not really sure exactly what happened, just that I was hit over the back, head and thrown to the ground face first, ” she said.
“I ran screaming, blood came out of my nose, I completely ran, I ran screaming for safety there.”
Ericson said security was able to stop two of the girls from the group on the bus who she saw fleeing after the attack.
West Vancouver Police confirmed they had arrested a 22-year-old woman and were recommending assault charges.
Ericson said the attack left him with a concussion and a broken nose, along with considerable vomiting and swelling.
She said it was a sign of the increasing violence in the city, violence she feared would prevent other people from entering when they saw something bad happening.
“I was targeted because of being involved, and I think that raises the question of whether people are going to continue putting themselves out, putting themselves at risk, knowing that we’re seeing a lot of consequences for doing that,” she said.
She added that she was concerned for the safety of transit workers, as the driver in her case was instructed to continue with the disrupted passengers on board.
“The bus driver was injured in his will and was very upset when he left because he didn’t want those people on the bus,” she said.
The union representing West Vancouver blue bus drivers said the incident was handled appropriately.
He said a transit coordinator put security on the bus in order to provide a “quick resolution” to the initial dispute, and that as soon as the disruptive passengers departed West Vancouver, a supervisor went up to check on the driver’s welfare.
“One area of concern for us, as a union, is the lack of communication from our employer regarding this incident,” Trump Local 134 president Cornel neagu said in an email.
“Unfortunately, the details of the event were not relayed to us live, but rather, we learned about it through various media sources.”
Transit safety became a hot issue earlier this spring, following a string of violent incidents across the Metro Vancouver Transit System.
Statistics, however, showed that there were actually fewer crimes committed on the transit system in 2022 than in 2021, with violent crime numbers also stable year-on-year.
It’s a similar story when it comes to attacks on transit operators. In 2022 there were 65, compared to 67 a year earlier.
Metro Vancouver Transit Police has said that while there was a per capita drop in reported crimes per 100,000 Transit passengers between the two years, passenger journeys increased by 45 per cent in the same period.
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