A 17-year-old girl pummeled a female city bus driver on a
Bronx street Tuesday because she wasn't allowed to board with her dog, authorities said.
Steangeli Medina was stopped from boarding the Bx9 on Fordham Road at Cambreleng Ave. in
Belmont just before 6p.m., cops said.
The driver,
Marlene Bien-Aime, 48, spotted a pooch tucked in the teen's jacket and told her she couldn't ride unless the dog was in a crate, authorities said.
That's when Medina went berserk.
"She punched the driver in theface," a source said. "She thendrags her off the bus by her hair ... where she punched and kicked her repeatedly about the body."
Bien-Aime was taken to
St. Barnabas Hospital with a black eye and facial cuts.
"The bus driver was doing her job, enforcing the rules, and was assaulted while performing her duties, for no apparent reason," said
Frank Austin, a vice chairman of
Transport Workers Union Local 100.
Medina was charged with assault, menacing and harassment.
Austin said the union has been pushing to get protective barriers installed on buses since the fatal stabbing of a
Brooklyn bus driver in December 2008.
Edwin Thomas, 46, a divorced father of two, was knifed by a straphanger who tried to beat a fare in
Bedford-Stuyvesant.
