Throw Grandma From The Train ?! Really?!

It never fails, just when you think the world can't get more absurd, it does.

The family of Emma Anderson, 82, claim she was injured by a Metro-Dade Transit security guard who they said roughly yanked her from a train seat and escorted her off the train on Feb. 20.

Anderson of Miami-Dade, was singing spiritual hymns from her train seat when a security guard asked her to stop. The security guard told Anderson that she was being disruptive.

"I was beating my little beads with the bottle and I was singing a song, and he came up to me and said, 'Ma'am, you're making too much noise.

A passenger started recording Anderson and the guard's interaction on his cell phone. The video shows Anderson being forcibly removed from the train.

"By what we saw on the footage, she was dragged off the train. She wasn't escorted," Anderson's son, Kenny Anderson, 42, told ABC News. "She was just singing to the Lord, preaching to the Lord, and he grabbed her bag and drug her off the train."

Kenny says the security guard pulled the bag his mother was holding so hard that she fell backwards and hurt herself.

"We took her to the hospital and they took X-rays. Doctors say she has a bruised hip and shoulder," Anderson said.

One of the witnesses is heard on tape demanding the name of the security guard.

A spokesperson for Miami-Dade Transit said in a statement, "The elderly passenger, Ms. Anderson, who was escorted from a Metrorail train, was initially asked by a security guard to refrain from singing loudly and playing an instrument while on the train. She refused to comply."

The spokesperson said singing, dancing or playing an instrument are prohibited without permit.

"Ms. Anderson's singing was causing a disturbance to other passengers and impeding important train announcements from being heard. We regret that Ms. Anderson had to eventually be escorted out, but regardless of age, all passengers need to abide by the rules associated with using transit," the statement said.

The Anderson family said they have hired an attorney and plan to pursue legal action for their mother's injuries.

This story makes me very angry. The fundamental lack of respect that this "security guard" has for the elderly is disgusting and disturbing to say the least, and the fact the Miami Dade transit is not at all apologetic about this vicious assault, is a crime in and of itself.
The way Mrs Anderson was treated speaks to a much larger problem in our society. The older generation is no longer treasured or revered. In fact, it is quite the opposite. They are treated is if they are useless nuisances who have outlived their usefulness. But the generations before us have made it possible for us to thrive. They have made sacrifices that many of us could never dream of making. Many have been active participants in the civil rights movement, while others have fought in wars to keep us free. Some have lived their lives as shining examples of what men and women should be, and others have more heart than people half their age.
Mrs. Anderson has lived almost a century, and she has no doubt had her ups and downs just like the rest of us. But she still has joy. As she sang her spiritual hymn to the glory of God that day on the train the last thing that she expected was to be brutally assaulted, and tossed off of the train like trash. But her testimony is that she will live to sing another day.

I have to wonder if this situation would have gone a different way had Mrs. Anderson not been African-American, and I also have to wonder if she was both a victim of agism and racism.
There is one thing that I know for sure. She is definitely a victim.


PR

Side bar: If you know that your 82 year old mother or Grandmother was going to be all over the news, wouldn't you at least tell her to take off her shower cap? Or maybe it's just me. I couldn't find one pic of her without this shower cap.