(Newswire.net — April 28, 2017) –Between 40 to 60 juveniles jumped the fare gates at the Coliseum Station in Oakland, ran to the second-story platform, where they entered a train car, according to BART spokeswoman Alicia Trost. While some held the train doors open, others forced passengers to hand over their bags and cell phones.
“It all happened pretty quickly – it was about 30 seconds,” Trost said. Of the seven victims, six were mugged aboard and one on the platform, while at least two people were inflicted minor head or facial injuries requiring medical attention.
The group of teens all fled the scene and scattered before police arrived. The train was held at the station for some 15 minutes to allow authorities to question and treat the victims.
The police will gather surveillance video of the incident and share it with the Oakland Unified School District and the local housing authority in an attempt to identify the perpetrators. Images will not be shared as the suspects are minors, according to reports.
The incident happened around 9:30 pm on Saturday, which, reports said, involved no guns or weapons.
This is not the first robbery at the local transport. In recent weeks there were a series of robberies, but the last one was described by police as a first of its kind.
BART said they will increase the number of police officers on trains and at stations and will also hire new Police Chief Carlos Rojas.
BART also admitted that similar robberies, with juveniles storming trains and quickly fleeing, had occurred in the past, but none had involved such a large number of persons.
Following a last year’s incident, when 19-year-old Carlos Misael Funez-Romero was shot dead on a train at the West Oakland station, BART has been in the process of replacing decoy cameras with security cameras. The investigation into the murder showed that the camera on the train car where the boy was killed had not captured the shooting or the suspect, because it was a fake. This has been confirmed by Alicia Trost.