A bus driver attempted to close the bus doors on a haredi woman and her baby to “help her die,” in a shocking incident reported by haredi radio station Kol Hai this week.
The Kiryat Sefer woman had been on her way home from Bnei Brak at about 11:00 pm last month when the incident occurred.
“I entered the 230 bus line from the back door with my 1 year-old,” the woman recounted. “The driver closed the door on us. I stayed there with my baby – we were half in, half out of the bus.”
“I knocked and yelled at the driver, ‘Do you not notice us? Look at the door!'” she said. “He responded: ‘I’m helping you die.”
“The bus was empty,” she said. “I had gotten on at the first stop on Rabbi Akiva St.”
She said the driver was an Arab-Israeli, raising fears of a possible nationalistic motive.
“He didn’t say it in any joking way, he was very serious,” she continued. “Even afterwards, he didn’t apologize – he just kept driving like nothing happened.”
A second Kiryat Sefer woman explained to the station that the incident has cast a shadow over the community, leading many to fear for their lives on local buses. The driver could take passengers somewhere to attack them, she said.
The victim filed a complaint with the bus company immediately after the incident, but it took two weeks for them to respond, she noted.
“I expected them to fire him,” she fumed. “They instead told me they couldn’t, and he continues to drive that route.”
A company representative clarified after the broadcast that the case is “very serious” and was being handled.