Sydney Maisie was on her way to a job interview in Webster Groves when her bus ride turned horribly wrong.
On the afternoon of April 13, a man entered the MetroBus she was on. He only had a $20 bill to pay the bus’ $1 fare. Buses don’t give change, and the man made a “huge scene” about how he had to shell out $20 to enter. So the bus driver allowed the man to board the bus and gave him back his $20, causing him to “gleefully” gloat about his free ride to one man, showing him his $20, according to Maisie.
The new passenger, a Black man with a medium build who authorities are still trying to identify, eventually made his way to the back of the bus and sat in a corner. Maisie, a transgender woman, was in a row in front of him. Her instincts told her “don’t interact, don’t interact” as the man spoke to himself and glanced at her.
At one point, Maisie says he motioned for her to come over and sit next to him, which she interpreted as flirting. She declined his advances, saying, “No thanks, I’d rather not.” The man came toward her anyway.
“In a frustrated tone that sounded disappointed, he said, ‘Man, you sound like an old man,’” Maisie recalls. “I was like, ‘Huh?’ And that’s when he started to beat the fuck out of me.”
What happened for the next 90 seconds or so would shock St. Louis in its brutality. The assault, all captured by a MetroBus security camera, involved the man punching, slapping, kicking, and threatening Maisie with a handgun.
The FBI has launched a hate crime investigation into the assault and released footage of the incident this week to announce a $10,000 reward for information on the man’s identity.
FBI spokesperson Rebecca Naber says the agency is following up on tips it received.
Maisie, who on Thursday spoke about the incident for the first time to a reporter, says she still has “trauma flashbacks” when she rides the bus.
It’s “haunting” to know the man is still out there, Maisie adds.
But Maisie is also keenly aware that what happened to her isn’t rare. According to the FBI’s latest hate crime statistics, there was a “significant increase” of anti-transgender incidents in 2022.
What’s more, on the day the FBI released the footage and Maisie’s assault made headlines, other local stories illustrated the reality of violence in the city. It was the same day a 12-year-old shot his mom’s boyfriend in the head, and news broke that a St. Louis man had been charged with two firearm-related felonies after pulling a gun on a woman he met through a dating app.
“Shit like this happens all the time,” Maisie says. “It’s just another headline.”
Yet as far as attacks on MetroBuses, Kevin Scott, general manager of security for Bistate Development, tells the RFT that incidents like Maisie's assault are very rare.
When asked if there were any security measures in place that could have prevented Maisie's assault, particularly in regard to the assailant's gun, Scott says it's not possible to "scan" riders at all 59 bus routes in MetroTransit's three-jurisdiction scope.
But the agency does has employ public safety personnel who patrol bus routes and transit centers and respond to calls for help. Security guards and police officers, including some from SLMPD, according to Scott, ride the buses.
"We can't have a police officer on every bus, but we try to create a dynamic where police officers in overtime and off-duty capacity ride some of our buses for visibility and comfort," Scott says.
There wasn't a security guard or police officer on Maisie's bus, and it bus kept traveling its route while Maisie was attacked.
Even through the chaos of it all, Maisie says she remembers questioning why it seemed as if no one else on the packed bus reacted. “Why were there no turning heads?” She remembers kicking back and screaming “Somebody help me!”
“Nobody’s going to help you here!” Maisie says the man said as he pulled out his gun.
“No one seemed to notice until after I was on the ground in a fetal position [and] in tears,” Maisie says.
The man eventually stopped. Maisie is unsure why. In the minute after the bus came to a stop, the man left.
Surprisingly, Maisie had no serious injuries and did not go to a hospital. She did, however, experience extreme pain throughout her body in the weeks afterward. She was bruised for about a month.
Maisie was on her way to a second job interview at a massage clinic in Webster Groves (she didn’t end up rescheduling the interview). The inner-ring suburb is not too far from St. Louis’ Shaw neighborhood, where Maisie boarded the bus that day. Yet she notes that what would take a car just 10-15 minutes on the road involved a two-hour trip on the bus with three different stops, Maisie says.
Maisie is a staunch supporter of public transit, and still uses it exclusively. Even so, she wonders if things would have been different if St. Louis’ system was safer or more efficient.
“It shows how big of a failure public transit is in St. Louis,” Maisie says. “It’s not safe. Like
nobody should have a gun on the bus. But he did.”
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