While they waited on a MARTA train, members of the Wenszell family watched in horror as their mother was pushed to the tracks below as a train approached.
It was August 2018, and the Milwaukee family was on a “girls trip” to Atlanta. Susan Wenszell hit her head when she was pushed to the tracks and daughter Katie sprung to action, jumping to the track to save her mother’s life, the family later said. The heroics nearly cost Katie her own life.
But if proper security had been in place at the Midtown MARTA station, the incident might have been prevented, the family contends in a lawsuit filed late last month in Fulton County Superior Court. According to the lawsuit, the man who pushed Susan Wenszell to the track was involved in another assault several minutes earlier, and others at the station attempted to alert MARTA.
“A safe transit system is instrumental to the continued success of the Atlanta area. It’s something we all deserve,” Atlanta attorney Matthew Stoddard told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “Marta clearly failed to meet its responsibility to use extraordinary care to keep its facilities safe for paying customers like Sue and Katie.”
In an emailed statement, a MARTA spokeswoman said the transit agency is reviewing the lawsuit.
Both women were hit by the train: The mother suffered a concussion and broken bones in her elbow and wrist, but her daughter’s injuries were much more serious.
Katie’s sisters believe the backpack she was wearing got caught on the train and it dragged her, crushing her right foot and severing two toes. Katie was knocked unconscious. And at the hospital, doctors found she had swelling on her brain, a punctured lung, and shattered bones in her shoulder. At least eight bones in her face were also shattered or fractured, her father said. Katie was in a medically induced coma until she could be flown back home to Wisconsin.
Christopher Patrick Brooklin was arrested after pushing Sue Wenszell. Brooklin had just gotten out of jail five days before the incident and had had a previous run-in with MARTA after he threw a glass bottle at a bus, MARTA police records show.
On the same day he pushed Wenszell, Brooklin hit a young girl in the back of the head at the same MARTA station, the lawsuit states. Other passengers attempted unsuccessfully to alert MARTA officials to the assault, according to the suit. No MARTA security member was at their post and no one answered two calls placed from “safety phones.”
“Over six minutes passed while Brooklin remained inside the Midtown MARTA station looking for his next victim,” the lawsuit states.
The Wenszells were unaware of Brooklin’s actions when they walked into the station.
“Six minutes is more than enough time to identify a mentally disturbed person and remove him from the station,” Stoddard said.
Brooklin was not prosecuted because he was found to be mentally disabled, Fulton court records show. He was committed to a mental institution, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit, which asks for a trial, seeks damages for the Wenszells, including payment of medical bills that have topped $1.5 million.
“We are hopeful that MARTA and its insurers will eventually do the right thing, but we look forward to presenting this case to a jury if they fail to do so,” Stoddard said.
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