After beating on bus, victim rebuilding life

Sarah Kreager enters Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center after a break during the court hearing, in which five teenagers were found responsible for the December assault. (Sun photo by Chiaki Kawajiri / March 18, 2008)

Sarah Kreager had picked up her prescription anti-depressant and boarded the No. 27 bus in Hampden that would take her and her boyfriend downtown to a methadone clinic.

She had eaten lunch at a soup kitchen that day. Her three children were living with foster parents. She was homeless.

By the time she got on the bus, she said she was already on her "last option," that a string of setbacks had formed "a black cloud" over her.

But what happened next thrust her personal pain into the public consciousness. She was beaten by a crowd of eighth-graders from nearby Robert Poole Middle School after a dispute over a seat on the crowded bus. She wanted to sit down; a student said the spot had been saved. Some black students said Kreager uttered a racial slur, disputed by both Kreager and the black bus driver.

In a fight described by witnesses as a riot, students jumped on Kreager and her boyfriend, Troy Ennis. The brawl spilled from the bus and ended in a gutter on 33rd Street, with students piling on top of the young woman and kicking her until a neighbor rushed to her rescue.

Arrests followed, then a long, racially charged trial in juvenile court that ended this week with five students found responsible, their punishment to be determined by a judge next month.

In a telephone interview yesterday, Kreager said the judge's ruling brought her "happiness," "joy" and vindication.

"For everything that was in the papers and on TV -- and people say 'Oh, that's not a big deal' -- but when people, defense attorneys and parents, are lying on you on public television, saying you're racist, that your husband is a violent wife-beater, I fear my kids might read that one day."

Now, after months being hidden away in the city's witness protection program, Kreager will have to rebuild her life.

Within 30 days, she will have to find a new place to live. Her goal is to reunite with her three children -- ages 1, 2 and 5 -- who have been living with two separate foster families since August, when Kreager became homeless after a string of setbacks that began with a car accident and grew into an addiction to painkillers.

"My oldest still loves the raw beauty of life, whispers to dolls and is in awe of the stars," Kreager said in a telephone interview yesterday, two days after the exhausting trial, in which she was labeled a racist and an instigator of the Dec. 4 brawl aboard the No. 27 bus in Hampden.

The circumstances that put Kreager and Ennis, 31, on the bus began, she says, years ago in a hospital emergency room in Baltimore, where she arrived with a racing heart, muscle spasms and a general feeling she was going to suffer a heart attack. Kreager says doctors diagnosed her with panic attacks, and prescribed anti-anxiety medication, Xanax and Paxil.

Then came the fender-bender. They didn't have health insurance, and Kreager's friend referred her to a doctor, who would examine her for only $175. Kreager said she should have been suspicious, but accepted the doctor's prescriptions for "everything," nonetheless.

She went back for refills every month and slowly she began to take them when her neck and back weren't hurting, when she was simply in "a bad mood" or needed extra energy to keep up with two kids, she said.

"It got to the point where my body was hurting because I wasn't taking Percocet," she said. "It was worse when I didn't take them, than it was before I took them at all."

Then, Ennis got injured at work, and Kreager offered him a few of her pills. Then, they both started filling prescriptions. By the time Kreager was pregnant with her third child, her addiction had escalated to oxycontin. Her obstetrician put her on methadone for the baby's health, and Ennis soon followed with treatment.

In August, he lost his job. Their youngest daughter was six months old. They moved into a friend's house. But when Kreager suspected her of using drugs, she said, the family left for the streets and placed their children with her mother.

"Everything started to crumble," Kreager said. "We had no family support. Our friends, so many had problems on their own. Some were in jail, some were drug-addicted. The life which they led caught up to them."

On Dec. 2, two days before she boarded the No. 27 bus, Kreager testified, she ran out of Paxil. And after eating a free lunch at the Franciscan Center on 23rd Street, she and Ennis boarded the light rail for Hampden, where they grew up, where her ailing father frequented the bars, loaded on heroin and later on alcohol.

That's where she knew of a pharmacy that would give her the best price. From there, the couple intended to retrace their steps, but they knew the No. 27 -- a bus route Ennis had ridden "all his life" -- would be faster. It was already 2:20 p.m., and they needed to get back downtown by 3.

Ennis needed his methadone, which he took daily.

Unlike Kreager, Ennis was under "fee restrictions" at the Man Alive clinic in the 2100 block of Maryland Avenue because he hadn't paid for his daily treatments for four weeks. The clinic only served "restricted" clients from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m.

"If you don't have insurance, you have to pay for your own methadone," Kreager said. "The feeling is that if you can come up with your own money to buy drugs, you can come up with money to buy methadone. Recovery is something you have to do yourself."

melissa.harris@baltsun.com

Related topic galleries: Health Treatments, Heart Disease, Juvenile Delinquency, Medicine, Hospitals and Clinics, Health and Safety at School, Family

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