Thursday, 4:30 PM
Two teens stabbed at T stop
By Michael Naughton and Erin Conroy, Globe Correspondents
Two teenagers were stabbed at the Back Bay MBTA Station just after rush hour tonight, temporarily closing the station and forcing hundreds of commuters into the cold, to make their way home or wait for shuttle buses. It was is the second stabbing at the station in about as many weeks.
The victims, who Boston Police officials described as males in their late teens, were stabbed multiple times after an altercation on the Orange line platform, police said. One victim was in critical condition at Boston Medical Center, and the other was being treated for non life-threatening injuries at Brigham and Women's Hospital, police said. Authorities were searching for a suspect.
Commuters tonight witnessed a bloody scene as they were evacuated from an outbound train just moments after the stabbing.
"The conductor said, 'We need you to evacuate the train, there's a medical emergency.' We got out of the train and saw a young boy lying on the ground … He was holding his stomach," said Hilda Betancourt, who was on an Orange line train that pulled into the station at about the same time as the 7:50 p.m. stabbing.
Other witnesses also said one of the victims collapsed on the outbound platform and laid there bleeding, holding his stomach as emergency personnel tended to him.
"There was a lot of blood," said Deila Vieira, who was trying to make her way home from work with Betancourt tonight.
Stranded commuters waited outside of the station's entrances for shuttle buses that quickly filled with bundled up passengers, who braved temperatures in the 20s. Orange line traffic was suspended for about two hours between Massachusetts Avenue and New England Medical Center stations, and shuttle buses transported commuters between the stops.
Tonight's stabbing was the second at the station in less than three weeks. A 17-year-old West Roxbury man was attacked and stabbed nine times on Feb. 19 by three Boston high school students, who pled not guilty during their arraignments last week. The suspects were identified with the help of the T's surveillance camera system.
Officials did not know tonight if the stabbings were caught on camera.
After tonight's stabbing, Vieira said officials need to do more to protect the public.
"The security here is weak. They definitely need to do something about this," Vieira said. "You never know what's going to happen. It's horrible."
