© Brian YuenPassengers aboard an idle BART train.
The incident — the first of its kind in recent memory — occurred around 9:30 p.m. Saturday at Coliseum Station.
According to a police officials, witnesses said 40 to 60 juveniles flooded the station, jumped the fare gates and rushed to the second-story train platform. Some of the robbers apparently held open the doors of a Dublin-bound train car while others streamed inside, confronting and robbing and in some cases beating riders.
The juveniles "committed multiple strong-arm robberies of bags and cell phones," said a police summary prepared after the incident. "At least two victims suffered head/facial injuries requiring medical attention."
Alicia Trost, a BART spokeswoman, said Monday that seven robberies had occurred — with victims losing a purse, a duffel bag and five phones. Six people were robbed inside the train car, with a seventh confronted on the platform, she said.
The attack was quick, police reported, and the teenagers were able to retreat from the station and vanish into the surrounding East Oakland neighborhood before BART officers could respond. The train that was hit was held for about 15 minutes as authorities investigated the crime and tended to the injured.
"We are in the process of pulling all surveillance video and we will share with Oakland police, Oakland Unified School District and Oakland Housing Authority to see if they can help identify the minors," Trost said. "We have had success with sharing images of juveniles with this group and identifying and making arrests in the past."
BART announced that it has hired a new police chief who worked previously in Southern California. Candice Nguyen reports.
The images cannot be shared publicly, she said, because the suspects appear to be minors.
BART is also checking with Oakland police to see if any other incidents Saturday night — such as a big house party being broken up — might shed light on the identity of the suspects.
A series of robberies on BART trains in recent weeks has prompted the agency to increase patrols — though this was apparently the first takeover-style heist.
The incident is likely to present a challenge for BART, which hired a new police chief last week. The agency has struggled to contain fare evaders, and is in the midst of installing surveillance cameras in train cars after The Chronicle reported that most of the existing cameras were decoys.
Reader Comments
I say a good dose of reality is just what they need. Hurray for the gangsta brats whom don't have jobs, hope, or a future and it's all because of people precisely like these one, the one's concerned about their credit scores, about buying a Mcmansion, who could care less about the people being murded by our armies, and whom somehow conclude that although their own government is now a crony corporate operated system modeled on organized crime, that they themselves have no need for personal protections.
God forbid some person from Montana or Texas would have been there and opened fire on these little hoods. They would have crucified them just like they did with Bernard Goetz in that other bulwark of communism called New York State, and that was get this...33 years ago. [Link]
Any pictures of this 'gang' of 'hoodlums'. What are the odds that they just might be black?
Why is it so hard to simply say that truth?
No pics above but I just typed < teens swarm bart > in videos, and the truth fell right out: (fifth result)
60 BLACK TEENS ROB BART TRAIN IN OAKLAND, CA. .. [Link]
If they'd been white, it would have been in the title, and discussed before now. (And now I'll be accused of being a racist when I can walk into any black bar in town and hang.... Spare me BS. Just give a little more truth.
R.C.
R.C.
R.C.
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R.C.