A 16-year-old Revere girl was charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon in connection with an unprovoked attack on a 35-year-old woman on Tuesday, according to Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden.
The girl, whose identity was not disclosed by the district attorney’s office, was also charged with unarmed robbery for the attack on a Silver Line bus toward Nubian Square on July 2, officials said. She was arraigned Friday at Boston Juvenile Court.
The girl was part of a group of eight suspected juveniles who participated in the attack, officials said. She was seen on video hitting the woman’s head roughly seven times and kicking her in the head and face about three times, according to officials.
Other juveniles were seen throwing potato chips at the woman’s head and squeezing a bottle of lotion onto her head and body before another member of the group pushed her down to the floor. She suffered a bloody nose and bruises to her face, but was not hospitalized, according to officials.
Members of the group were also caught on video rummaging through the woman’s handbag, with one member seen stealing her phone while she was down on the ground in a self-protective position. The group was reportedly spotted at the AMC South Bay Center cinema complex before the attack, where theater employees told officials about disturbances caused by a large group of teenagers.
“This was a shocking, brutal attack on a female MBTA passenger—utterly unprovoked—and an intolerable assault on the security and safety of our transit system itself,” Hayden said in a statement. “While our goal is to provide options and services to young offenders so their early mistakes don’t short circuit their future lives, our overlying responsibility is to protect the public and to secure justice for victims.”
Judge Peter Coyne set a $300 bail and ordered the Revere girl to stay away from the victim and all Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority property, officials said. Hayden said he expects police to track down the other group members who participated in the attack.
“I’m grateful for the work by transit police to identify this defendant and I’m confident they will make further identifications of those who participated in this horrendous assault,” Hayden said in a statement.
