Before a fight broke out over a seat on a city bus in Baltimore, Sarah Kreager tried to reason with the middleschoolers starting to punch her and pull her hair, her boyfriend testified Thursday.
“It?s not worth this all over a seat,” Kreager told two middle school girls, Troy Ennis, 30, testified in Baltimore City juvenile court during the third day of trial in the assault case against five Robert Poole Middle School students.
The teens are charged with first-degree assault in the beatings of Kreager, 26, Ennis and the No. 27 bus driver as more than 40 students rode home from school Dec. 4.
As Kreager was trying to get the girls off her, Ennis said students from the front and back of the bus closed in on the couple.
“They tried to bum-rush us,” Ennis testified.
Ennis shouted for the bus driver to stop, and once off the bus, he tried to hold the vehicle?s doors closed while students attempted to come after them.
Four or five boys who got off the bus knocked Ennis to the ground and punched him, he said. While down, Ennis said he could see seven or eight students attacking Kreager as she lay in a gutter.
The couple were only saved after a woman came out of a nearby house and called the police, Ennis testified.
“Some lady came out of her house yelling,” Ennis testified. “She said, ?Get off that girl! That?s a woman you?re beating!? ”
The students ran off, and Ennis said he looked up to see his girlfriend?s face badly bruised and bleeding.
“I started crying almost,” he testified. “I got butterflies in my stomach looking at her like that. … She was beat up pretty bad.”
After the attack, Ennis said he and the bus driver began identifying students at the scene who were involved in the altercation.
Under cross-examination, Ennis denied being an aggressor at any point ? or using racial slurs ? during the brawl. He did admit to using the “N” word in the past when citing lyrics from rap songs, thoughhe denied using the racial slur that day, as students allege.
“It?s common sense not to say that on a bus with a majority of African-Americans,” Ennis testified.
Defense attorney Donald Wright said he believed Ennis was “challenging” the students to fight and said, “I?ll take you on one at a time!”
Ennis denied those allegations.
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 trial resumes today.
