Passengers ignore mugging of pregnant woman
A woman who was mugged on a busy metro train in Stockholm’s old town says nobody came to help her – despite the fact that she was six months pregnant.
Frida Agnaes had got on the train at Slussen station, on Stockholm metro’s red line, on her way back from a concert in Södermalm. At the next station, Gamla Stan, a “young, completely normal-looking, blond Swedish man,” grabbed her bag, which was lying on the seat next to her.
“I was already holding on to the bag, and I instinctively kept holding on to it when he tried to take it off me,” Agnaes told The Local.
“I fell onto the floor, and was dragged along to the door of the train, still holding on to my bag.”
The doors of the train closed with her on the inside, holding on to the bag, and with the robber on the outside, holding on to the strap. The doors then re-opened, allowing the robber to get away with the bag.
“It takes a while for the doors to shut, to open, and to shut again,” Agnaes points out, but during all this time, none of the other passengers in the carriage intervened, despite the fact that Agnaes was visibly pregnant.
Even when the train started moving again and the assailant was making his getaway, few of the passengers reacted to what had happened.
“One girl said, ‘I thought you had got stuck in the door.’ When I got off at Östermalmstorg, an older man asked if I wanted help.”
Fortunately, neither Agneas nor her baby were hurt, but she is now always on her guard, and feels tense when she travels by metro.
Asked what she would have done if she had seen the same thing happen to someone else, Agnaes says she hopes she would have intervened “even before this happened to me.”
“You’ve got to step in, otherwise the criminals get the upper hand. At the moment, they know that people won’t do anything.”
"But people are ignorant, and don't care," she says.
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Frida Agnaes had got on the train at Slussen station, on Stockholm metro’s red line, on her way back from a concert in Södermalm. At the next station, Gamla Stan, a “young, completely normal-looking, blond Swedish man,” grabbed her bag, which was lying on the seat next to her.
“I was already holding on to the bag, and I instinctively kept holding on to it when he tried to take it off me,” Agnaes told The Local.
“I fell onto the floor, and was dragged along to the door of the train, still holding on to my bag.”
The doors of the train closed with her on the inside, holding on to the bag, and with the robber on the outside, holding on to the strap. The doors then re-opened, allowing the robber to get away with the bag.
“It takes a while for the doors to shut, to open, and to shut again,” Agnaes points out, but during all this time, none of the other passengers in the carriage intervened, despite the fact that Agnaes was visibly pregnant.
Even when the train started moving again and the assailant was making his getaway, few of the passengers reacted to what had happened.
“One girl said, ‘I thought you had got stuck in the door.’ When I got off at Östermalmstorg, an older man asked if I wanted help.”
Fortunately, neither Agneas nor her baby were hurt, but she is now always on her guard, and feels tense when she travels by metro.
Asked what she would have done if she had seen the same thing happen to someone else, Agnaes says she hopes she would have intervened “even before this happened to me.”
“You’ve got to step in, otherwise the criminals get the upper hand. At the moment, they know that people won’t do anything.”
"But people are ignorant, and don't care," she says.
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