A BART passenger may have taken his Leatherface Halloween costume a little too far. A video posted to Twitter Monday afternoon showed a BART rider menacing the other passengers with two chainsaws on a Richmond-bound train. While the video was quickly racking up thousands of views, BART police were able to track and apprehend the multiple-chainsaw-wielding suspect.
THIS SHIT AINT FUNNY @SFBART YALL HAVE TO DO BETTER WHAT THE FUCK pic.twitter.com/jTmwYwyweu
— Leen (@jalina_ks) October 29, 2018
The video above was posted to a Twitter account named @jalina_ks just after 4:30 p.m. Monday (though another user claims to have shot the video.) It shows a BART waving around one chainsaw, announcing to no one in particular that he would “cut your freaking head off,” and then unpacking a second chainsaw from its hardware store packaging. Neither chainsaw was activated during the video.
We’ve never seen anything like this before. Best thing to do is to snap a pic and send it to dispatch via BART Watch App. You can also go to another car and alert the train operator using the intercom. What train car are you on?
— SFBART (@SFBART) October 29, 2018
But this behavior was scary enough to riders on the train, several of whom did alert BART police. The chainsaw guy was tracked and subsequently arrested when exiting at Lake Merritt.
Police received multiple calls and officers quickly positioned themselves to board the train at Lake Merritt when the man actually got off. There was no waiting to respond, they acted within minutes.
— SFBART (@SFBART) October 30, 2018
BART police have since confirmed the suspect is San Francisco resident Patrick Bingman, who was arrested and booked for “making criminal threats.” NBC Bay Area reports Bingman had several other outstanding arrest warrants.
We’ve taken BART to task for its security lapses in the past, but we’ve got to note that this is one example where the security system worked effectively. This incident occurred on the same day that a rider got their leg caught between a train and the platform, another gruesome situation for BART security. This shows the range of unpredictable problems BART police deal with daily, and at least in this case, there was no chainsaw massacre.
