As she sat on the witness stand inBaltimore City?s juvenile courthouse, Sarah Kreager?s face showed no signs of the bruising and broken bones that sent the city into an uproar three months ago.
Her injuries have since healed, but the horror of Dec. 4 ? when police say she was brutally beaten by middle schoolers aboard an MTA bus ? lives on, the 26-year-old said.
“I was yelling, ?My eye! Stop! My eye! Please stop!? ” Kreager testified Monday, the first day of trial in the assault case against five Robert Poole Middle School students 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.
Kreager said the brawl began when she boarded a Maryland Transit Administration bus and attempted to sit down.
A voice behind her ? whom Kreager identified as defendant Nakita M., a 15-year-old girl ? told her she “needed to move.”
When she didn?t, the threats began.
“If she don?t move, we?ll move this [expletive],” Kreager said the 15-year-old girl said.
Now alarmed, Kreager stood up and walked to where Ennis was standing, but the girl followed her.
“You white [expletive] think you own [expletive]. This is our bus,” the girl said, Kreager testified.
That?s when all hell broke loose, Kreager said, with Nakita M. grabbing her hair and punching her in the face ? and Ennis jumping in front of her to block the attack from the students.
“The whole bus began to charge at Mr. Ennis,” she said.
The couple forced their way off the bus, but students quickly surrounded Kreager, while other students engaged Ennis.
She said Nakita M. pulled out a nail file and challenged Kreager to fight, saying “What?s good? What?s good?” Then a male student punched Kreager in the back of the head and several students repeatedly kicked and punched her as she fell to the ground.
Kreager testified she also felt a sharp object stab her in the head four or five times.
“I ended up in the gutter,” she said.
Then she felt hands pulling her head up off the ground by her hair and heard Nakita say: “Kick the [expletive].”
A male student wearing butter-color boots then kicked Kreager in the eye.
“I felt excruciating pain,” she said. “Everything went black.”
In addition to Kreager?s testimony, prosecutors played calls to 911 during the attack.
“There?s a riot on the bus!” one unidentified voice said, according to recordings played in court Monday. “They jumped out and beat the crap out of some girl in the street!”
Kreager?s testimony will continue today at 10 a.m.
