Arturo Rios boarded a Route 2 bus in downtown San Antonio around 9:20 p.m. on October 5 after a quick stop at a convenience store, expecting nothing more than a ride home. Instead, he says a woman tried to grab his phone, and when he refused to hand it over, the encounter turned violent, leaving him with six broken ribs and a renewed fear of riding public transit.
Rios told KSAT that the woman bit and scratched him and pulled him to the floor of the bus, then kicked him in the neck and head. He said no one on board, including the driver, stepped in to help while the attack was happening. Emergency responders eventually took him to a hospital, where doctors diagnosed six broken ribs, three on each side of his chest.
He spent several days in the intensive care unit before being transferred and eventually released home, according to the same KSAT report. The injuries compounded a prior neck injury that had already required surgery and several metal plates, and Rios said the new trauma has added to his chronic pain. He now takes medication for the neck injury and said he is unable to drive because of both the injury and the medication, leaving him reliant on VIA for work and daily errands.
Suspect Charged, Video Still Pending
VIA confirmed that 30-year-old Erika Leanda Chandler was arrested in connection with the incident and charged with assault causing bodily injury, the station's report states. Chandler has an arraignment hearing scheduled for December, though the evidence does not establish what has happened with her case since. Rios said he is still waiting for VIA to release surveillance video from that night to share with KSAT, and the station said it had requested the footage from the agency but had not yet received it.
Under Texas law, a person commits an offense if they intentionally, knowingly or recklessly cause bodily injury to another, or intentionally or knowingly threaten someone with imminent bodily injury, according to the Texas Constitution and Statutes. Rios, who described himself as disabled and said he must ride the bus for everything, said he has also witnessed harassment, drug use and other unsafe behavior while riding VIA buses in the past.
Living With the Aftermath
Since the attack, Rios said he pays closer attention to fellow passengers and tries to sit near the driver when he rides. He said he still worries about his safety on public transportation and may start turning to Uber or Lyft for some trips, even though he said the added expense and stress make that a difficult option for someone on a fixed budget. He told the station he needed help in the moment and hopes that speaking publicly will draw more attention to passenger safety and prevent someone else from going through the same ordeal. He said he wants VIA to consider adding security on nighttime routes.
VIA's Police Force Is Growing as Ridership Climbs
The attack comes as VIA Metropolitan Transit has been expanding both its ridership and its policing footprint. Fixed-route bus ridership rose 10.1% from January through August 2026 compared with the same stretch the year before, according to Metro Magazine, while the share of the network running every 30 minutes or better jumped from 46% in January 2025 to 80% by August 2026. VIA's full-time operator workforce grew from 799 in December 2024 to 1,021 by September 2026, per the same report.
Calls for transit-police service also climbed, reaching 20,509 in 2025, up from 18,938 the year before, even as arrests fell from 508 to 306, according to San Antonio Report. The agency recently named Joseph R. Rose, who most recently held a leadership role at Austin's CapMetro, as its new chief of transit police. VIA's police force currently has roughly 50 sworn officers and more than 100 security personnel covering an area spanning about 98% of Bexar County, and the agency's proposed fiscal year 2026 budget sets aside about $13.7 million for transit police and security, including seven new officer positions.
VIA describes its transit police as a fully commissioned law enforcement agency whose officers are licensed Texas peace officers certified through the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, according to VIA Metropolitan Transit. The agency encourages riders to report suspicious activity, unsafe behavior or requests for assistance immediately.
Surveillance Gaps Have Hampered Other Transit Cases
Rios's wait for bus footage echoes a problem that surfaced in Chicago, where CTA driver Paige McCulloch-Burton was physically attacked while operating the #82 route in May 2025. Investigators closed that case after CTA security services told police the bus's surveillance hard drive was defective and no video existed for the time of the incident, per WTTW News. McCulloch-Burton said the attack left her with chronic pain and post-traumatic stress disorder.
VIA is in the midst of its own fix for aging onboard video: the agency is partnering with Safety Vision LLC to replace outdated equipment with new hardware and the SafetyNet video-management platform, according to a report from APTA Passenger Transport. The first phase of that modernization will upgrade surveillance technology on 361 fixed-route buses, though it is not established whether the upgrades had reached the bus Rios was riding.
Violence on VIA buses has turned deadly before. In a separate case, an argument between two men on a VIA bus escalated once they reached a west-side stop, leading the suspect to pull out a firearm and shoot the other man, according to KENS 5. Armando Aaron Rodriguez Jr. was arrested and now faces a murder charge in that case.
