Diamond Rust
Washington, DC — Diamond Rust, a 20-year-old woman from Southeast Washington, DC, was slammed on the ground and brutally arrested by a Metro transit police for not paying to get on a bus. All that happened right in front of her two children.
On Tuesday, Rust, together with her one-year-old son and two-year-old daughter, boarded a bus at Alabama Avenue in Southeast D.C. She reportedly walked past the fare box without paying and sat down.
After a while, an undercover police approached her and demanded her to get off the bus.
“I’m pacing back and forth like ‘can you hurry up?’ He said he felt threatened with me pacing back and forth,” Rust explained.
She admitted that she didn’t stop pacing and just kept walking. Police also claimed that she kept putting her hands in her pocket and ignoring the police’s commands.
“He said I was resisting. He pushed me to the fence,” Rust recalled of the horrifying moment.
According to the police report, Rust kept pulling away so the officer had to slam her to the ground to finish the arrest.
She was with her two children at the time and they saw the violence.
“The girl lifted my face up and I seen her — my daughter like right there crying. That’s when I started crying,” Rust said.
Rust suffers from a fractured knee, open wounds on the face, and four broken teeth. She was rushed to the hospital shortly after the arrest but she was more worried about how this would affect her children.
“My son he don’t even like looking at me now. My daughter keeps saying police did this to mommy.”
Rust, a graduating student from Ballou STAY High School, has a DC One fare card which allows her to have a free bus ride. But she doesn’t have it with her on the day of the incident. A picture, however, shows her bag with cash and two smart trip cards.
When asked if she would have done anything differently, Rust told WUSA9, “No. because this is just the person I am.”
Rust plans to file a complaint with Metro. Metro Transit Police haven’t further commented yet about the incident.