Under heavy questioning from defense attorneys, Sarah Kreager on Tuesday adamantly denied ever spitting on or yelling racial slurs at the middle school students charged with beating her aboard a city bus.
“I never spit, ma?am,” Kreager, 26, testified during the second day of trial in the assault case against five Robert Poole Middle School students. The teensare charged in the beating of Kreager, her boyfriend, Troy Ennis, 30, and the No. 27 bus driver, as more than 40 students rode home from school Dec. 4.
Defense attorney Kimberly Thomas, who represents the 15-year-old girl, Nakita M., at the center of the confrontation with Kreager, said Ennis commanded Kreager to spit with a racial slur.
“He told you, ?Spit on those n—-,? didn?t he?” she asked.
“No, ma?am,” Kreager replied.
Thomas? client alleged Kreager spit on her and punched her seven times while Ennis yelled racial slurs and threatened to stab the students, but Kreager said Nakita was the instigator.
“You white [expletive] think you own [expletive]. This is our bus,” the girl said, Kreager testified Monday.
Nakita is the only student Kreager said she can identify by name. Kreager could not pick out any students sitting in the courtroom, because, she said, her vision is too bad. She said also remembers a “light-skinned” black girl and a boy wearing a green jacket involved in the attack.
The defense attorneys spent much of Tuesday trying to get Sinai Hospital Dr. Mahajabin Ali to say that Kreager?s injuries, including two broken bones in her face, were sustained sometime before the bus fight. But Ali said the time such injuries occurred could not pinpointed.
Of the nine students initially charged in the beating, prosecutors have dropped three of their cases, but secured one conviction. One 14-year-old girl pleaded “involved” ? the juvenile equivalent to guilty ? to misdemeanor assault after admitting to striking Kreager one time.
The case will resume Thursday.
