A Hawthorne man has been charged with attempted murder for stabbing a Metro bus driver in Wilmington earlier this month, authorities said.
Darnell Marshon Bray, 30, is expected to make his first court appearance Monday, April 29, when he may enter a plea to one count of attempted murder with an additional allegation that he used a knife and inflicted great bodily injury, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement.
The attack occurred around 8:30 p.m. on April 13 in the area of 119th Street and Wilmington Avenue, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which put out a bulletin four days later with surveillance photos of the suspect in hopes of generating tips from the public.
Bray boarded the bus and allegedly began yelling at the bus driver before punching him in the face and stabbing him in the chest, according to sheriff’s and district attorney’s office officials. Bray then got off the bus and ran northbound on Wilmington Avenue.
The attack was unprovoked, sheriff’s officials said.
Bray was arrested by deputies with the LASD’s Transit Bureau on Wednesday, inmate records show. He was being held in jail on no bail and DA’s officials said they would be recommending a bail amount of more than $2 million Monday.
The bus driver was released from the hospital and has since been recovering at home, DA officials said.
“Metro workers and Angelenos should not have to live in fear as they engage in their work and daily commutes,” DA George Gascon said. “I am grateful that the victim is recovering from this horrible attack, and my thoughts are with the passengers who had to witness this terrifying ordeal.”
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The attack is one of a growing number of attacks on employees and citizens using public transportation in Los Angeles in recent months, the problem getting bad enough that Kathryn Barger, a county supervisor and member of the Los Angeles Metro board, said Thursday during a board meeting she is “afraid” and would not ride the public transportation system alone, KTLA reported.
Friday’s announcement of charges against Bray also comes two days after another man, Elliott Tramel Nowden, 45, was charged with murder and first-degree robbery in the stabbing death of a 66-year-old woman on a Metro subway line in the San Fernando Valley about 5 a.m. Monday. Nowden had a prior conviction for attacking someone on a Metro train.
Earlier on the same day Bray is accused of attacking the driver in Willowbrook, another man was stabbed on a bus in Silver Lake and taken to a hospital in critical condition, KTLA reported. The suspect in that stabbing, which occurred about 1:45 a.m., was arrested later that day.