Bus assault victim: 'People need to feel safer on public transport'

The victim of the assault says he no longer feels safe using public transport.

A young man has spoken out about the need for people to feel safe while using public transport after he was assaulted while on a bus last Sunday night.

Brian Crehan was on a bus from Dublin to Kildare just after 11.30pm last Sunday when he woke up to a man “thumping” him in the side of the head.

A musician and a student, Mr Crehan said he often uses public transport but following the incident, he no longer feels safe doing so.

The 23-year-old said he had a small disagreement with the man prior to boarding the bus after he picked up and took money that Mr Crehan had accidentally dropped.

However, Mr Crehan said he “thought nothing more of it” and got onto the bus and fell asleep.

I woke up and this man had me by the scruff of the neck, and he was thumping me in the side of the head.

“I didn’t really know what was going on," he said.

The man then got off the bus because it was approaching his stop while Mr Crehan was left feeling “dazed and confused”.

“As soon as your man got off, the driver drove up to the next stop and stopped and took me off and made sure I was ok and checked me out. He was very nice to me.” 

The student said he would have had his reservations about public transport before the incident and had also recently witnessed a fight while he was a passenger on a train.

“I’m a big fella but you are stuck in a box, essentially, with people. You have nowhere to go, and you can’t run away,” he said.

You’re just not safe on a bus with people like that out there and there’s nothing that is being done to make it safe.

Mr Crehan said he would like to see security of some sort or a community Garda presence on public transport. He believes that this would act as a deterrent to antisocial or violent behavior.

“Identifying routes where there is significant amounts of trouble and incident reports and maybe even every night, because as you see with the statistics when alcohol gets involved, things do tend to get more rowdy,” he added.

Following the incident, he said he would do whatever he could to avoid using public transport.

“It’s the first time where I’m just not really comfortable anymore just because I know what it’s like now to be trapped, to be assaulted and realising if that’s happening, there’s not a lot you can do.” 

 A spokesperson for the National Transport Authority (NTA) said the NTA believes that tackling antisocial behaviour on public transport is “best done within the existing policing framework".

"Gardaí already work closely with transport operators at national and local level, and NTA believes that this is the best approach," they said.