On Tuesday, the San Francisco Police Department showed local broadcast media footage of a November assault on a Muni bus. And while the assault is rotten — you can see it below — the most striking element of the incident is how it appears that the driver of the Muni bus did nothing to stop the crime, not even closing the bus doors to prevent the assailants from repeatedly getting on the bus to re-attack their victim.
KTVU reports that the assault happened on November 3 at 1:45 a.m., on a 14-Mission stopped at the infamous intersection of Mission and Sixth Streets. That's when, as you can see in the video, a 55-year-old passenger "suspected the two suspects were trying to rob other passengers on the bus," and said as much.
The men responded by repeatedly trying to pull the man off the bus, then repeatedly hitting and kicking him when he refused to comply. Here's the video:
All in all, you see the suspects get on and off the bus, via the back doors, four times. Throughout the assault, the bus' back doors remained open, even after a man in an SFMTA vest that KTVU says "appears to be the bus driver" walks into the video frame. It's clear that the apparent driver knew this was going on...and yet, the bus' back doors remain open.
Weird, right? "It is not clear why the bus driver didn't close the doors," KTVU reports, and a call from SFist to the SFMTA for comment was not returned at publication time. So that mystery remains, I guess!
Just as mysterious, SFPD spokesperson Officer Carlos Manfredi says, is the identity of the assailants. He tells KTVU that both are between the ages of 20-25, and that one stands at 5'9", the other at a petite 5'2".
"We'd like to make an arrest and identify who these two criminals are because if they did it to this one male, they're going to do it again," Manfredi tells KTVU.
"We want to send a clear message, 'Hey, look you're being watched and you're being recorded. It's not cool to assault someone on the Muni bus,'" he told NBC Bay Area.
The victim was treated and released at San Francisco General Hospital for injuries he received during the attack, but wasn't seriously injured. Much of that was due to his refusal to go to be taken to a second location, Manfredi says.
"Had he gotten off the bus with these two suspects," Manfredi says, "they would have really ended up hurting him."
If you recognize these miscreants, you can contact SFPD anonymously at 415-575-4444 or text-a-tip to TIP411 and begin the text with "SFPD." And if you recognize the driver...sorry, pal, looks like you're on your own.