Three people stabbed in two separate incidents on Metro system

In the latest violence on Los Angeles County’s mass transit system, a man slashed a woman’s arm with a weapon at a Metro station Monday just a few hours after two people were stabbed during a fight that started aboard a bus in Glendale, authorities said.

All three victims are expected to survive, but the bloodshed highlights a spate of violence aboard Metro buses and trains over the last several weeks, including a killing at a Studio City train station and a driver who was stabbed on a bus full of passengers.

On Monday, a fight broke out among a group of passengers aboard a Metro bus around 7 p.m., according to a Metro spokesperson. The driver stopped the bus on Los Feliz Road at South Central Avenue in Glendale, where a man and three teenage boys got off and continued to fight in the street, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

Two of the four were stabbed, Metro authorities said. At first the teenagers ran, but two of them were apprehended and arrested after the Sheriff’s Department and the Glendale Police Department responded. The man, who was stabbed in the arm, was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, according to the Sheriff’s Department.

One of the teenagers taken into custody was stabbed in the leg, according to authorities. He was taken to a hospital and was stable, but it’s unclear how he was injured, the Sheriff’s Department said. Authorities were still looking for the third teenager as of Tuesday afternoon.

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Just a few hours later, a man attacked a woman on an elevator at the Vermont/Athens Metro Station alongside the 105 Freeway, according to the Sheriff’s Department.

The woman was stabbed in the arm shortly before 9 p.m., and the attacker boarded a westbound train headed toward the Hawthorne/Lennox Station, a Sheriff’s Department spokesperson told TV station KTLA. The woman was taken to a hospital, treated and released, authorities said.

Anyone with information about either incident can contact the Sheriff’s Department at (323) 563-5000.

Although multiple attacks on Metro passengers have been in the news recently, the agency says fewer crimes are being reported per passenger. According to Metro, there were a little over 5 crimes reported per 1 million boardings in March, about 28% lower than in February and 41% lower than in March 2023.

The total number of Metro bus and train boardings in March 2024 was 25.8 million.

In the last several weeks, Metro passengers and drivers have been attacked, stabbed and in one case killed while trying to use the transportation system.

On April 13, a 70-year-old man was stabbed around 1:30 a.m. by another passenger in the 2700 block of Sunset Boulevard in Silver Lake aboard a Metro bus. The man was stabbed during an argument, according to the Los Angeles Police Department, and was taken to a hospital in stable condition.

Several hours later, a man stabbed a Metro bus driver in Willowbrook while passengers watched the driver beg for help. The assailant ran from the scene, according to the Sheriff’s Department.

The driver was able to get off the bus, and a good Samaritan picked him up and took him to Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital. He was later released, according to a Metro spokesperson.

A man fatally slashed the throat of a 66-year-old woman as she was getting off a Metro train in Studio City on April 22. Elliot Tramel Nowden was arrested shortly after he attacked Mirna Soza, who died from her injuries at a hospital, according to the Sheriff’s Department.

“She was stabbed without provocation by a man who grabbed the bag that she was holding,” Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón said during a news conference last month. The district attorney said prosecutors also filed a special allegation that the attack occurred during a robbery. If convicted of all charges, Nowden faces life in prison without parole.

On the same day that Gascón’s office announced charges against Nowden, a Metro official asked Metro’s executive board to declare an emergency to hasten the construction of protective barriers for its bus drivers.

Times staff writer Rachel Uranga contributed to this report.