HYATTSVILLE, Md. — Prince George's County police have arrested a 28-year-old man they say assaulted a woman at a Metro station Sunday morning.
The attack happened just before 3 a.m. at the Prince George's County Plaza Metro Station in Hyattsville, Md., according to PGPD. Surveillance video captured a man, who police identified as 28-year-old Daniel Alan Newsome, approaching the woman at the bus bay area and assaulting her.
The woman was discovered four hours later by a station manager, police said. She was in near-freezing temperatures, was badly beaten and wasn't wearing a lot of clothes.
According to PGPD, Newsome turned himself in. He has been charged with second-degree attempted murder and first-degree assault.
"Suspect turned himself into Prince George's Co. Police w/o incident," Metro Transit Police tweeted Tuesday night. "Our thanks to the public for your assistance."
Police said the woman is in the hospital with serious injuries.
“It’s a lot of crime happening in this area,” metro rider Toni Colwell said. "A lot of young kids are out doing stuff they shouldn’t be doing.”
The incident had some riders questioning whether they felt safe on the train.
“That makes me uncomfortable,” said one woman who had just started riding Metro again since the pandemic. "Actually I’m not about to be catching Metro, not out here at least. I’m going to stay in well-lit areas where there are a lot of people.”
According to a recent Metro Transit Police Crime report posted online, aggravated assaults and robberies are on the rise. With just seven weeks left of 2021, there have already been 144 aggravated assaults, surpassing the count for all of 2020 (99). Robberies are up too, with 160 to date compared to 145 in 2020.
Metro Transit Police are still looking for a trend to attribute the uptick in crime to, but for Colwell, she blames the pandemic.
“Everybody done changed," she said. "Nobody’s the same. The world is a different place.”
A WMATA spokesperson told WUSA9 that Metro Transit Police partner with area agencies to patrol all 91 stations and Metro properties overnight. Unfortunately, the spokesperson said, “there was no patrol in the area during Sunday’s attack.”