MBTA police have still not found Josiah Spaulding III, 23, the man who allegedly assailed three black teenage girls in the concourse leading from Park Street to Downtown Crossing on Nov. 22.
‘This kind of altercation is quite rare and no different than any other portion of society,’ said MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo. ‘This is not a chronic occurrence for the MBTA.’
The attacks occurred between 9:30 and 10 p.m. and involved about six people, according to Pesaturo. It began with verbal assaults that escalated to more serious attacks, he said. Spaulding began yelling racial slurs and started to beat three of the teenage girls, all between the ages of 13 and 17, with a metal baton he was carrying with him. Pesaturo said.
According to Pesaturo, the MBTA police ‘responded quickly’ and the girls were taken to Massachusetts General Hospital where they received treatment for their injuries.
Last Friday, three MBTA policemen went to Boston Municipal Court and obtained an arrest warrant for Spaulding, charging him with three counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon and a civil rights violation.
‘I think the MBTA has done a pretty good job of dealing with this attack,’ Pesaturo said. ‘In less than a week we identified a suspect and obtained a warrant.’
Formerly of Hamilton, Spaulding is the son of Josiah Spaulding Jr., the president and CEO of the Wang Center, a popular center for the arts in Boston, and grandson to Josiah Spaulding, a former Republican candidate for Senate who also founded the Spaulding Rehabilitation Center.
Pesaturo stressed that despite this violent attack, MBTA stations are very safe places, and attacks like the one on Nov. 22 are very rare.
‘This kind of occurrence could happen right on the street level,’ Pesaturo said. ‘Instead it happened underground.’
Several MBTA police were patrolling the area yesterday evening.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
