Did the bystanders react appropriately to 80-year-old being beaten on bus?

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Authorities are calling a Clallam Transit bus driver a hero after she stepped in to save a woman being brutally attacked and also managed to stop the attacker from hijacking the bus. But KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson wants to know why the first reaction for everybody else on the bus was to run away.

“What should we call the passengers in the back of the bus who just sprinted off?” Dori asked. “Are they cowards? Are they wise? I found it horrifying.”

The incident occurred Saturday afternoon in Port Angeles, when a man, identified as 59-year-old Riley Edge White, rises from his seat, walks over to an 80-year-old woman and kicks her in the face. Surveillance cameras on the bus captured the violent attack.

As the woman screamed, the man grabbed her head, threw her to the floor and dragged her. After hearing the woman scream, the bus driver pulled over, yells at the man to stop and manages to pull him away.

The man then chokes the driver, with less than a dozen riders watch from the back of the bus, many of them on their cellphones. The man again attacked his bloodied first victim and the bus driver opens the doors, allowing the other riders to escape.

The driver called for help and the man pushed the elderly woman out of the bus. The bus drier ultimately managed to escape and disable the vehicle’s battery, which prevented the attacker from driving off with the bus.

Beyond the intense violence of the incident, Dori was most struck by the reaction of the passengers.

“What you see on the bus surveillance video is people streaming off the bus; not one person went and helped the 80-year-old woman or the female bus driver,” he said. “… They’re all huddled with their cell phones. That has become the default, instinctive reaction to seeing an 80-year-old woman get kicked in the head and get beaten by a man. It’s, ‘Oh, I’m going to grab my phone and record this and then when the door opens up I’m going to sprint off as fast as I can.’”

Police say the recommended action in these situations are to run, hide or fight, in that order. But Dori thinks the priorities might change for certain instances.

“What if you’re seeing a woman who cannot run, a woman who cannot fight back?” he asked. “Yeah, your instinct for self-preservation is to run, but do you go and help?

“I haven’t been in that exact situation so it’s easy for me to sit here and say I would have gone,” he added. “And yet every single person who was in that situation, their gut reaction was to sprint out of there, to not get involved.”

KIRO 7 contributed to this story

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