Some joked it’s the most Jersey video ever. But commuters on the clearly packed NJ Transit train to Trenton Wednesday evening were not laughing.
The woman in a priority seat reserved for the elderly or disabled, wearing suede thigh-high boots, a tan baseball cap and clutching a designer bag is focused on her phone when the passenger beside her is seen asking for her to move the bag which appears to be a Louis Vuitton. She appears to ignore the requests and looks to be pushing her bag further on the man’s side or leg.
“Come on, it’s already a late train. You’re delaying everybody,” the guy sitting next to her says. She takes an earbud out and says there’s plenty of seats.
Numerous passengers say, “No. There’s not.”
One calls her a “dumb bitch.”
The seated woman then shouts to a passenger standing near her: “You’re not disabled, you’re not pregnant. I don’t give a fuck. I don’t want your bed bugs. I don’t want your smell. You’re disgusting.”
When the passenger yells back at her she screams, “Fuck off bitch, shut the fuck up, I can’t hear you.”
Soon a conductor is there.
Recorded by Thaedra Frangos and then shared widely on social media, the video shows the young woman, on her phone with her bag parked in the seat next to her, telling a train conductor who motions toward her and her bag, “No….dodon’t touch my stuff.”
She swats his hand away.
When he explains that she needs to move her bag so someone can have the seat she declines.
“Noooo …I don’t want anyone sitting next to me. There’s more seats available,” she says holding the bag. As soon as she protests that there’s plenty of room, passengers immediately declare, that there are in fact no more seats.
Screenshot/Thaedra Frangos
“No there isn’t! No there isn’t!” A chorus chimes.
“It’s standing room only!”
The conductor then says, sounding fed up, “Maam, put it up there or I’m gonna get you off the train right now.”
She appears unphased as she adjusts her hat and gets back to her phone.
The video continues with one passenger saying that if she was removed, there’s be two seats for people to occupy. The woman declares that where she is “is my personal space.”
“No, it’s not,” she’s told.
She continues to argue: “I don’t care if I’m 90 pounds or 50 or 300 pounds, this is my personal space.”
Now the conductor has had it.
“Listen, listen,” he insists, and as she continues to maintain she’s in her personal space, the conductor says that’s it.
“I want her off the train. Get her off the train. Ger her off. Ger her off. You want your personal space? You’ll have it outside.”
The train loudspeaker can be heard then.
And so, the train stops and transit police responded. It takes her several seconds to gather her stuff and be escorted off of the train.
NJ Transit spokeswoman Lisa Torbic told NJ.com Thursday that, “When train 3955 arrived at Newark Penn Station last night, New Jersey Transit Police asked the woman to exit the train to discuss the situation. Train 3955 was then able to depart the station.” She apparently didn’t cooperate with cops and left on her own, the website reported.