Woman arrested after alleged assault on city bus

A 49-year-old woman was arrested on Tuesday after allegedly assaulting and threatening another woman on a city bus.

According to police, officers were called to the 300 block of Confederation Drive at around 9:45 p.m.

“Further investigations revealed the suspect got into a verbal confrontation with the victim before hitting her and threatening her,” police said in a statement. “The victim was not seriously injured as a result of the assault.”

The alleged attacker has been charged with assault with a weapon and uttering threats.

Saskatoon’s transit union has reported an increase in violent incidents on city buses, and at least two people have been stabbed while riding buses in the city so far this year.

“The violence — not only is it not going away, it’s escalating in severity. The violent acts that we’re seeing on the buses are to the extreme that we’ve never seen before,” Darcy Pederson, president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 615, said during a previous interview with 650 CKOM.

Last month, the city unveiled a safety plan aimed at protecting both transit riders and operators, including the addition of community support officers on the most problematic bus routes. But Pederson said the plan falls short in one area, as the officers won’t have any authority to kick problematic riders off the buses.

“The severity and the level of violence that we’re seeing, I’m afraid that those (officers) are going to be just as at-risk as our operators,” he said.

–with files from 650 CKOM’s Lara Fominoff and Mia Holowaychuk