Three brothers stop racist attack against mother and toddler on train
On Saturday evening, a group of three brothers were riding a Portland light rail train when they heard commotion ahead. It was a man shouting racial slurs at two women and a toddler, while bystanders looked on.
Emilio Herrera, 21, and his younger brothers, Romeo Herrera, 18, and Pablo Lopez, 17, said that they were wary of calling the police because they did not know what the man would do or how an interaction with law enforcement would go.
“I watch the news,” Emilio Herrera told The Oregonian. “We’re three young brown kids so I didn’t know how that would turn out.”
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So they put themselves between the man and the women he was shouting at, recording the interaction, just to be safe.
“I see this fairly big man yelling,” Herrera said. “That man was just yelling at this woman, yelling the n-word, kind of being belligerent.”
The three brothers asked that the man leave the train, and although he eventually did, the man got back on and began to yell at the brothers, even pushing them. Because they did not want to escalate the situation, they did not push back, and eventually, the man got off the MAX for good.
“Everybody just sat there and watched us,” Herrera said.
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After the story of their experience was posted, a woman named Nitasha Sweaney, 27, came forward and thanked the brothers.
She says the man was panhandling for money and after being told ‘no’ got belligerent.
“I asked him ‘please sit down. please just sit back down,'” wrote Sweaney in a statement. “He did not listen and came about a foot away from us and was yelling racial slurs and cussing in our face. At this point the only thing I could do was hold my daughter tightly and cover her ears.”
Sweaney says she has never been in an altercation like this before and now feels uncomfortable on public transportation.
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“My main focus now is learning to drive and getting my drivers license,” wrote Sweaney. “I would never want my child to have to go through that again.”
In the aftermath, Emilio took to Facebook to express props to his brothers for helping him deescalate the situation.
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