After the I-Team obtained exclusive video appearing to show an Access-a-Ride driver beating up his disabled passenger, police say they’ve finally made an arrest. But the victim still says it took way too long to get the driver off the road. NBC New York’s Chris Glorioso reports.
Less than a week after an I-team investigation revealed surveillance video appearing to show a disabled stroke survivor being attacked by her own Access-A-Ride driver, detectives arrested a Staten Island man and charged him with assault in the third degree.
Khamidjon Murodov, 46, of Bay Terrace, was arrested inside the 68th Precinct on December 12th, nearly a month and a half after the November 1st altercation - and just days after the video went public.
Court records show Murodov pleaded not guilty. No one answered his door when the I-Team visited seeking comment.
Kisha Jones, the passenger who was attacked, applauded the arrest, but her attorney, Nicholas Liakas said the investigation shouldn’t have taken as long as it did, blaming the MTA which administers the Access-A-Ride program.
“This is someone who assaulted a woman in broad daylight, and it was a dead end until the I-Team got involved,” Liakas said. “Not everyone has their story told on the news and it seems up until that point this was just going to go away for Access-A-Ride.”
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Jones has filed notice she intends to sue the MTA for failure to ensure her Access-A-Ride driver was safe and properly vetted.
The MTA declined to comment on Jones’s legal filing, citing the pending nature of the claim. But prior to that filing, Chris Pangilinan, the MTA’s Vice President of Paratransit, condemned the driver’s conduct and confirmed the transit agency ordered its contracted dispatcher to terminate his Access-A-Ride eligibility.
“I was horrified by what I saw. That is not customer service, that is the opposite of customer service,” Pangilinan said.
Though Pangilinan said Kisha Jones could reach out to the MTA in order to obtain her driver’s identity and vehicle information, Jones says she was still waiting for those details when she learned the driver had been arrested.
“No one ever got back to me,” Jones said. “Access-A-Ride clearly didn’t try to help us.”
The NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission, which licenses Paratransit drivers, said it has also taken action against Murodov.
“As soon as we learned about this disturbing incident, we worked to identify the driver and suspend him, and we are now seeking revocation of his TLC license,” said David Do, the TLC Commissioner. “Safety is our fundamental tenet, and violence against passengers or drivers is illegal and totally unacceptable.”
