Destinee Mangum, one of the targets of hate speech on a MAX train, thanks strangers for saving her life. pic.twitter.com/sefmOAyIVt
— FOX 12 Oregon KPTV (@fox12oregon) May 28, 2017
Two men are dead and another went to the hospital after Jeremy Joseph Christian allegedly stabbed them on a train in Portland, Oregon on Friday. Witnesses said they had intervened when he started chewing out two teen girls because he was prejudiced against them, and he responded with a violent attack. One of the girls, 16-year-old Destinee Mangum, thanked them Sunday in an interview with KPTV.
“I just want to say thank you to the people who put their life on the line for me because they didn’t even know me and they lost their lives because of me and my friend and the way we look,” she said through tears. “And I just want to say thank you to them and their family, and that I appreciate them because without them, we probably would be dead right now.”
She said Christian started harassing her and her friend, who is Muslim.
“He told us to go back to Saudi Arabia and he told us we shouldn’t be here, to get out of his country,” she said. “He was just telling us that we basically weren’t anything and that we should kill ourselves.”
That’s when one of the men stuck up for them, she said, but it ended violently.
Christian, 35, remains at Multnomah County Jail one two counts of aggravated murder for the deaths of 53-year-old Army veteran Ricky John Best and 23-year-old Reed College graduate Taliesin Myrddin Namkai Meche. He is being held one count of attempted murder for an attack on 21-year-old Micah David-Cole Fletcher. Christian was also booked under one count of felon in possession of a restricted weapon, a misdemeanor, and two counts of second-degree intimidation, an Oregon hate crimes law.
Court records dug up by The Associated Press show that he pleaded guilty after holding up a convenience store with a gun in 2002. The Portland Mercury has reported that he is a white supremacist.
[Screengrab via KPTV]
