HOUSTON – On Monday on Route 163 near Fondren and Bissonnet, Murphy said he witnessed a younger passenger harassing and threatening an older woman over a seat on the bus.
"When the girl didn't want to move her things that's when the elderly lady, she actually grabbed her backpack, put it in the seat in front of her, and she moved her feet and tried to sit down," says Murphy. "When she did that, that's when the girl just started going ballistic."
Ballistic indeed.
The girl can be seen and heard shouting, "Step your old [expletive] outside!" "I'm about to whip your [expletive]." She gets angrier and angrier as the older woman seems to ignore her. "I'm not [expletive] playing," she yells. "Step outside!"
The bus driver pulls over and calls METRO police. Still -- the younger girl dares the woman to fight, threatens to drag her off the bus, and then as the woman apparently tries to call 911 herself -- the girl pulls her phone and purse from her hand. She then walks to an open door, breaks the phone, and throws the woman's purse outside. That is when Murphy steps in -- and he was the only person on the bus who did.
"I just started thinking like, 'I have a grandmother too, and I wouldn't want nobody doing that to mine,'" he recounts. "So that's just when I felt like I needed to say something and try to stop her."