A woman who was assaulted at the L’Enfant Plaza Metro station on her way home from work last week says she’s suffering from a concussion and from nightmares.
The woman said three teenagers attacked her about 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, shocking her with a Taser and beating her, she said.
News4 is not using her name or showing her face, but she had bruises around both eyes.
“I'm having nightmares. I wake up in the middle of the night and I see some sort of silhouette,” she said. “The gate opens, and here the danger comes to you.”
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She thinks they may have been trying to evade paying rail fare.
It started with a push, she said.
“And then the next thing I know is I get a blow on the face,” she said.
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Her recollections fade in and out, which she said is from the concussion.
“Then I remember being tased like really, really hard, and I remember being tased again and again and again,” she said. “Then I remember trying to get up, and then I remember somebody from the back punches me like really, really hard like in the head and the back.”
While trying to cover herself from the barrage of blows, she cried out for someone to help — cries that went unanswered.
“I remember asking people, ‘Help me, help me,’” she said. “It was like a group of people in a semicircle, and no one helped me.”
She said the attack was in sight of the station attendant’s booth, but said no one from there intervened in the attack, which would end as quickly as it began.
Arrests came quickly, too. The next day, two suspects were picked up and a third was identified.
But for the victim, the momentum in the case has slowed. She hasn’t heard anything else from the prosecutor’s office or victim’s services since the day after the attack.
It’ll be at least another three weeks before she can return to work. In fact, her interview with News4 was the first time she left home since the attack happened, she said.
She wants her attackers to face justice.
“I just really don’t want something like that to happen to someone else,” she said.
The victim and her husband say they’d also like to know why no Metro Transit Police officers were nearby.