Student assaulted, robbed in Vancouver bus received no help from witnesses

In a report by Global News, a student from the University of British Columbia (UBC) was beaten up by a group of teens around 10:45 p.m. while riding the #14 bus. (Pixabay photo)

Despite being attacked and robbed in a TransLink bus on Friday, passengers including the driver did not help the victim.

In a report by Global News, a student from the University of British Columbia (UBC) was beaten up by a group of teens around 10:45 p.m. while riding the #14 bus.

The student, whose identity was not identified for anonymity, an Asian, said that the group mocked her for transporting a large printer after they boarded the bus. They went on drinking vodka and vaping but not even one of the passengers nor the bus driver reacted, which she found surprising.

The lack of response from the people around her continued even if the harassment worsened after she asked the group to stop. As the bus reached its final stop, it turned physical when one of the girls approached her and started beating her on the forehead and right cheek with a fist.

“Not even a couple of times, like 10 times,” she told Global News.

The student explained that she tried to move to the front of the bus to alert the driver.

“I looked straight into the female bus driver’s eyes, saying like “help me, help me” or something like that, and she didn’t do anything. I think she was on the driver’s phone or something,” she narrated.

Things escalated when three more from the group joined in attacking her by pulling her hair, beating her, kicking her, and dragging her to the back of the bus.

Despite all these, she said that what disturbed her the most in this traumatizing incident is that “everybody [was] just watching it.”

“I was really disappointed that nobody helped me … I got bruises on my face and some of my parts were bleeding. I was really upset nobody was really helping me at all,” she said in the same report.

Apart from the violence, before leaving, the group also stole her backpack which had her laptop, phone, and wallet.

Racial hate crimes against Asians have been on the rise in some parts of the world ever since the outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) which originated from Wuhan, China. Canada had reported several cases of these as well and the student considers these stories.

“Rethinking the whole situation, like me being an Asian girl and four Caucasian boys and a girl, and no one helped me in this situation,” she said, also saying that she has thought of the possibility “What if [I was] a Caucasion girl, that things would be better?”

Global News reported that the Metro Vancouver Transit Police is already investigating and have spoken with the student and the witnesses. Police said that so far, there is no suggestion that the attack was racially motivated.