A 19-year-old woman was allegedly assaulted and beaten by another woman at the Forest Park-DeBaliviere MetroLink Station in St. Louis, Missouri, on Thursday.
Not only did bystanders refuse to intervene during the attack; two unarmed security guards patrolling the area did nothing to help the situation either, KTVI reported.
The incident is under investigation by the Bi-State Development Agency, but an early conclusion from the investigation was that the guards should have done more to help.
Metro President and CEO Taulby Roach said the guards, who are not armed, should have de-escalated the situation and will likely need further training.
Bi-State Commissioner Derrick Keith Cox said the problem is the agency paid a million dollars to receive bad advice on how to make the public transportation system safer.
One of the suggestions they received from that study was to take away guns from security guards and only arm police officers. Cox said with that put into practice, the gun ban leaves guards with very little to protect themselves or anyone else. Roach, however, said that guns in a situation like this would have made it worse.
Gun-free zones or areas where there is no armed law enforcement in place can cause a spike in violent crime. Orlando’s “Pulse” gay bar was a mandated gun-free zone by state law, yet it was home to one of the deadliest mass shootings in this country’s history.
A 2019 study from the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) showed that 89 percent of mass shootings in the 21st century took place in gun-free zones.
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