Calgary police say a 31-year-old Calgary man has been charged with attempted robbery after video was posted to social media showing him allegedly attacking a woman on a CTrain platform near city hall on Sunday.
In a statement on social media, police say the woman was standing on the CTrain platform on the south side of 7 Avenue when she was approached by an unknown man who grabbed her water bottle and splashed her face with it, before grabbing and shaking the woman while demanding her cellphone.
After a few seconds of shaking the woman and pushing her against the glass of the CTrain shelter, the video shows the man released her and fled the area — without her cellphone, according to police.
The video shows more than a dozen other people standing on the platform watching the attack, but none of them appear to have physically intervened to stop it.
The victim then called police and officers located the suspect in the East Village area of Calgary about 25 minutes later with help from witnesses.
The police statement said Braydon Joseph James French has been charged with one count of attempted robbery.
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While police said the incident does not appear to be racially motivated, the victim and others affected by the incident have been offered help from the CPS Diversity Resource Team, which, according to the police website, “actively engages with Calgary’s diverse communities – to help obtain successful resolutions to investigations or any other incidents.”
Responding to an inquiry from Global Calgary, the City of Calgary’s Acting Deputy Chief of Transit Public Safety, Michael Pratt, said addressing social disorder and reducing the number of incidents on Calgary’s transit system is a high priority for the city.
However, transit riders claim safety is still “a big problem. I think the police and the authorities should have more protection (for) the people,” said Simin Moradi, who added, “Late at night, there is no safety.”
Dominique Betts said she was surprised nobody stepped up to help the woman who was being attacked. “There’s quite a few people around in the video, so you’d think there’s somebody who would actually, like, try to stop that person. I guess it’s hard to step into something like that with somebody so big and not knowing what to do,” said Betts.
“It’s a dangerous world — like I’ve been put in situations myself where it’s not safe. It could happen to anybody — it happens regularly and like, you know, this one was caught on camera. It just sucks.”
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