‘This is L.A.’: Passengers subdue knife-wielding out-of-towners on Metro bus
When two intoxicated, knife-wielding out-of-towners decided to stir up trouble on a Metro bus in North Hollywood on Thursday, a couple of L.A. riders weren’t having any part in it.
Cellphone video posted on Instagram shows L.A. bus riders taking down two men, who claimed to be from Chicago, after they started a fight and whipped out a knife.
“You talk too much,” a bus rider says as he attempts to pin one of the men. “This is L.A…. Get your ... up outta here with that [expletive]. Disrespecting people on this bus.”
The out-of-towner replies, “Ain’t nobody disrespecting.”
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Sheriff’s officials said the men were intoxicated and boarded the Metro Orange Line at 3:25 p.m. at Tampa Avenue in Tarzana. The bus was bound for North Hollywood.
At some point during the ride, the men “got into it with two bus patrons,” said Ramon Montenegro, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Transit Policing Division.
That’s when one of the two men pulled out a knife, he said.
One of the bus patrons subdued the man as the other rider grabbed hold of the knife and took it.
The bus rider later gave the knife to a security officer.
The out-of-towners then got off the bus and entered a Metro Red Line train in North Hollywood. They didn’t get very far however. Deputies spotted them and arrested the pair on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon, Montenegro said.
The man who pulled the knife was taken to an area hospital where he was treated for cuts and bruises he suffered in the fracas. One of the bus riders suffered bruises as well, but refused medical treatment, Montenegro said.
Orlando Romero, who filmed the ordeal, told KABC-TV one of the men was drunkenly harassing patrons.
“I did kind of freak out when I saw the guy’s blood and it was splattered all over the floor and the side of the door,” Romero told the news station.
For breaking news in California, follow VeronicaRochaLA on Twitter.
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