Savage assault on bus passenger

On Wednesday, June 25 at just after 11 p.m. a bus stopped suddenly at Balluta, St Julians, where the driver got out of his seat and repeatedly savagely assaulted one of his passengers, a foreign young man, who was sitting on the seat on the driver's left. Other passengers in the bus, mostly young foreign females, could be seen and heard running screaming in a panic towards the back of the vehicle out of harm's way.

Naturally the young man got up to defend himself and found himself cornered in the bus, subjected to a prolonged shower of heavy blows from the driver. Eventually the young man was thrown off the bus, his shirt torn. When the young man shouted insults at his aggressor, the driver leapt out of his bus and assaulted his passenger on the pavement.

A number of passersby attempted not so successfully to restrain him. While all this was going on numerous passersby, most of whom were tourists, stopped in shocked silence to observe the commotion. One voice was heard shouting, "Stop hitting him".

I immediately phoned the St Julians police station to inform them of the incident and to give them the bus number, which I still have. However after the phone, having rung for one full minute, not eliciting a reply, I called the police on 119. The officer on duty immediately answered the phone and on being told of the incident, instead of asking me for more details and alerting a mobile squad vehicle, asked me whether I had filed a report at the local police station, a good 15 minutes walk away from where I was standing, as it is up to them to take action. I told him that I was reporting the incident to him and asked him for his number, which he gave me. He never asked me for the bus number or for any further information about the unfolding incident. By the time my conversation with the bureaucratic police officer was over the bus driver had returned to his bus and resumed his journey, presumably to Valletta.

The purpose of this letter is to publicly bring this incident to the attention of the powers that be for them to investigate both the aggression on the young bus passenger and the reaction of the police officer when I reported the incident. The citizens of this island can do without aggressive bus drivers and bureaucratic police officers.