SAN DIEGO — A 74-year-old man is recovering tonight after a man attacked him at a Mission Valley trolley station while he and his wife were on their way to an Aztec basketball game Saturday night.
CBS 8’s Anna Laurel sat down with the man and his wife who do not want to be identified because the wife says she is afraid their attacker will look for them.
Meanwhile, her husband is recovering from a broken jaw and now has his jaw clamped and will be for he next five weeks. His left ear was heavily bandaged and still bloody. The victim says doctors found brain bleeds when he went to the hospital Saturday night but those have stopped.
The female victim says Fenton Parkway Trolley Station was busy Saturday night with fans going to the Aztec basketball game.
She says she saw a man yelling and bothering another man at the station, then he stole the man’s phone. She says she took a picture. She says after the man stole the other man’s phone, the man whose phone was stolen was following him like he wanted his phone back so she said to him- ‘Stay away. It’s not worth it. Your phone’s not worth it. Walk away.’
She says, “The guy that took the phone did not like me getting involved and he starts walking over to where I was standing and there were quite a few bystanders. He looked at me and gave me the finger. And he points to my husband and says, ‘Does he belong to you?’ And he walks right over and he just punches him.”
The attacker broke her husband’s jaw. His left ear fell against a rock wall and was mangled and torn. The woman says the man turned and shoved another man to the ground near her. She says, “He was just combative and angry. He wasn't right in the head and he was ready to fight with anybody.”
She says her daughter scolded her for saying anything in the first place. But the woman says, “It's your first reaction you see somebody in trouble and you do something.” She never dreamed someone would attack her husband of 52 years in front of a crowd of people at a public trolley station. A trolley stop they’ve always used to go to Aztec games.
CBS 8 called the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System to ask about what kind of security system is in place for people using the trolley. CEO Sharon Cooney invited our crews to see the inside of their security command center. She says, “We have cameras everywhere in our stations, on our vehicles- bus and rail. We have over 10,000 cameras in our system.”
Cooney says crews monitor surveillance cameras 24-7. There are 6-9 cameras on every trolley car, inside and out. There are cameras all around trolley stations, the number depends on the size of the station. She says San Diego police asked for footage from Saturday night’s incident at the Fenton Parkway Station, and they gave it to them for their investigation.
San Diego MTS has 200 security personnel patrol stations and they will ride the trolley. But there’s not always a guard at every station. She says staff uses the cameras to help them put resources and officers where they need to be.
Cooney says, “We’re really looking for instances where we can really assist the security personnel to deploy personnel when something is happening.” She says with very large events, they bring all their personnel out.
As for the woman whose husband was attacked. She says someone with the district attorney’s office called and said they’re looking for the man in the pictures. She meets with a San Diego police detective on Thursday. As for their days of riding the trolley to Aztec Games, those are over. She says, “I don’t think my kids would let me.”