Cops: Mom beats, spits on SEPTA bus driver

A WOMAN with her 2-year-old child spat on a SEPTA bus driver and beat him with her umbrella Sunday after he asked her to quiet the screaming toddler, according to police.

It marked at least the second assault on a bus driver in the past two weeks.

The 50-year-old driver asked Tiffany Alexander, 25, to calm her child down soon after she boarded the Route 7 bus about 3 p.m., a police spokeswoman said.

Alexander argued with the driver and swung the umbrella as if to hit him, but she sat back down, police said. She then demanded to be let off the bus at Fairmount Avenue and 23rd Street, and as she got off she spat on the driver and hit him over the head with the umbrella, police said.

The driver was treated at Hahnemann University Hospital and released. Alexander was charged with aggravated assault.

Meanwhile, SEPTA drivers protested Monday outside Family Court, where three juveniles who allegedly assaulted a driver on March 17 were to have a hearing.

The hearing was continued, but the crowd of about 20 drivers got their first look at the three teens as they were taken from a sheriff's van into the courthouse. The protesters booed the teens as they were led into the building.

"They're grown-ass men; they ain't no kids," said bus driver Joe Bryant.

Although the teens were brought to the courthouse, they were not brought before Judge Kevin Dougherty, who granted a continuance in the case at the request of Assistant District Attorney Matthew Sedacca.

Sedacca asked for the continuance because the victim was unable to come to the courthouse because of his injuries. Dougherty denied motions from the teens' attorneys to have them released from custody

In that case, the 45-year-old driver of a Route 52 bus was punched, pulled from his driver's seat and severely beaten by three teens in Kingsessing who had been unruly on his bus.

The driver's wife, who was in court yesterday and asked that her name be withheld, said that her husband suffered a skull fracture, two orbital fractures and a sinus-cavity fracture. Although he has returned home, she said he remains immobile and can't take long drives.

She said that the attack "terrified" her husband and that when they learned the boys' ages - two are 17, one 16 - they were "shocked."

"All we could think of is, that's the same age of our son," she said.