The Bay State Way

Remember, folks, we commoners in Massachusetts don't need to own firearms for self-defense - the police will protect us all.

Diane Camillo of Quincy might beg to differ on that point. This story was too hard to excerpt, so I'll put up the whole thing.

Attacked Quincy mother assails MBTA security

A Quincy woman is calling for MBTA officials to step up security on the trains and at stops after she and her young son were attacked by a group of teenage girls.

Diane Camillo, 27, was riding the Orange Line inbound after a Memorial Day outing to the Franklin Park Zoo in Dorchester with her son Ryan, 5, and a friend. When a group of boisterous girls crammed into the already-crowded subway car, they bumped violently into Ryan's stroller several times, she said. Camillo asked them to apologize.

Instead, she said, as she turned to sit down, they jumped her and began kicking, punching and pulling her hair. No one on the crowded subway car did anything to her aid and the assault lasted several minutes, she said.

"They just attacked me. All I asked is that they say, 'Excuse me,'" Camillo said. "You think you're safe riding these trains and you're not."

Putting women and children in harm's way with no means to protect themselves from vicious criminal attacks - the proud Massachusetts liberal tradition lives on.

The beating continued until the train reached the Roxbury Crossing stop, she said. Camillo tried to leave with her son and friend, but the girls followed them out. The beating spilled out onto the subway platform.

Camillo and her friend, Elizabeth Feliciano of Boston, said they tried to get an MBTA worker to intervene, but he did nothing.

Although Camillo said she pressed an emergency call button while inside the train, MBTA police weren't waiting at the stop as she expected. An EMT showed up at the scene after the gang had already sauntered off, laughing about the incident, she said.

Camillo and her son were taken to Children's Hospital in Boston, where Ryan was treated and released. The boy's lip was cut during the fray, Camillo said.

The people of Massachusetts (especially those in Quincy) have been systematically denied the right to self-defense, in the name of "common sense" gun control. As a direct result, we now have a five-year-old boy and his mother getting viciously beaten on their way to the zoo.

Memo to Senator Barrios, and the rest of you gun-grabbing, statist pricks: You can take all your "It's for the children" gun control garbage and shove it up your "progressive" asses! How proud this story must make you all feel today.

"He never wants to ride the train again," said the young mother, who uses the train daily because she doesn't have a car.

Feliciano, 40, said she was also attacked and was stabbed in the hand several times with a sharp instrument.

"I'm not taking the train anymore," she said. "I'll take the bus."

MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo said transit police are investigating the incident. The train operator was interviewed yesterday and gave a description of the assailants.

Pesaturo said the conductor did try to break up the fight on the subway platform and went beyond what is expected of an MBTA employee in such a volatile situation.

"He put himself in harm's way, and that is not something we encourage of transit employees unless they're police," Pesaturo said. "The train crew did everything they were supposed to do."

Camillo and Feliciano say that isn't how it happened. They say no one from the MBTA helped.

Feliciano said she begged the train conductor to do something about the girls but he responded: "What do you want me to do? Hold them one by one? That's not my job."

After the fight was over, one passenger even blamed the two women for confronting the girls' on the train and setting off the fight, Feliciano said.

Welcome to Massachusetts - please check your personal responsibility at the door. Sickening.

Only one passenger, an elderly woman, had the courage to chastise the girls as they pummeled Camillo, she said.

Pesaturo said the subway is "100 percent safe," and that there is no indication that this was anything more than an "isolated incident."

Mr. Pesaturo is 100% delusional.

"It's not like we had a group of girls out wilding," he said.

OK, so maybe they weren't "wilding", whatever the fuck that means. What they were doing was violently assaulting a young women and her five-year-old son. But hey, as long as they weren't out doing anything bad.

Camillo, who said she suffered bruises and scrapes and had a headache that lasted two days, said the MBTA must do more to protect its passengers.

Feliciano, too, said the T needs to do more for passenger safety.

"All I want is for them to watch out for people," Feliciano said. "Respond to calls. Do something. How can they say there's nothing they can do?"

Because that's exactly what the people of Massachusetts have been taught to believe - that we are not to be trusted in providing for the safety and well-being of ourselves, our families, and our neighbors. That is the job of our benevolent, all-powerful, government officials.

Now shut up and get back in line - everything's fine.