Sarah Kreager threw the first punch igniting a brawl aboard a Baltimore City bus that ended with the 26-year-old woman lying in a gutter, a middle-school girl testified Monday in Baltimore juvenile court.
“The lady had a black eye,” said the witness, an eighth-grader at Robert Poole Middle School in Hampden. “Everybody was laughing at her eye.”
The girl said Kreager then exchanged words with Nakita M. ? one of five students charged with beating Kreager, and her boyfriend, Troy Ennis, 30, as more than 40 students rode home from school on the No. 27 bus Dec. 4 ? before getting up and whispering in Ennis? ear.
The next words out of his mouth began the fight, the witness said, recounting the following scene:
Ennis told Kreager, “Spit on them n—? ” and Nakita replied, “Ain?t nobody gonna spit on me.”
Ennis then told her, “I?ll beat your a–,” and Kreager said, “Don?t talk to him like that.”
“That?s when the lady banged Nakita,” Curtis testified. “She kind of stumbled down, almost fell. When she got up, they started fighting.”
The bus emptied and Nakita and Kreager parted ways and never had any more contact, the middle-schooler said.
The middle-school girl was the last witness called in the case by defense attorneys, who rested Monday.
Prosecutor Janet Hankin said the defense attorneys? witnesses actually made prosecutors? case stronger.
“The defense?s witnesses contradict each other in major respects,” she said.
Closing arguments will begin today at 10:30 a.m. with Juvenile Judge David Young set to rule on the students? fates afterward.
Kreager sustained two broken facial bones during the beating, which started on the bus and spilled out into a street gutter at Chestnut Avenue and 33rd Street. Kreager testified the altercation started after one middle school girl refused to let her sit down on the bus.
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.
