A man who witnessed a brutal and ultimately fatal attack on an Edmonton LRT train last week is speaking out.
37-year-old Manwar Khan works for Alberta Human Services and rides the LRT to and from work everyday.
On the afternoon of Friday, December 28, Khan left work early so he could take his two children to a doctor’s appointment.
The train Khan boarded was just leaving Stadium station when he saw two men running through the car. At the time Khan thought the men were just friends, fooling around.
“All of a sudden, the taller guy with the black jacket started to hit the other guy, and the guy with the white jacket he was just (saying) ‘get off me and leave me alone.'”
Khan says the next few minutes were terrifying.
“I was shocked, and we didn’t know what was happening at that time. The lady next to me, she was terrified,” Khan recalled, “Everyone in that car was shocked.”
The lady next to Khan urged him to press the emergency button, something that would require him to pass the pair that was fighting.
“I just seems to me that, what if there was something that happens to my son 20 years from now? Someone needs to help, someone needs to try. I just thought, who cares, I just got up and pressed the emergency button.”
Khan said the alleged attacker stopped and looked him in the eye at the moment.
“Honestly, I didn’t care,” Khan said, “I had to press the button.”
Khan then helped an elderly man and woman move to the other side of the car, where they would be safer.
He then tried shouting at the men to get the attacker to stop his assault but, Khan said it didn’t work.
“I said ‘I need two people so that I can grab that guy and save this guy’ but, the situation was really horrifying and I could tell everyone in that train, in that car, wanted it to be stopped, but the situation was so scary.”
By this time the train had arrived at Belvedere station. When to doors opened all of the passengers got off the train. Khan saw an ETS employee and alerted her of what was going on.
“All of a sudden the train doors closed,” Khan recalled.
The two men were still on the train. It continued on to Clareview station where police were waiting. The assault lasted six minutes, police said Monday.
The victim was found unconscious on the train and died in hospital on Sunday.
Khan was sombre in his interview with Global News, Sunday, and wonders if perhaps, more could have been done.
“If that day there were a couple security officers at the Belvedere station waiting for that train, we could have saved a life,” he said, “I tried everything I possibly could. I tried to save that guy and I failed.”
With files from Quinn Ohler.