The survivor of a train stabbing aboard a Portland, Oregon, train that left two people dead is urging well-wishers to remember the two girls who were originally targeted by the suspect’s hate-filled tirade.
Micah Fletcher, 21, who was stabbed in the Friday attack on the MAX train said in a video posted Wednesday on Facebook that he is grateful for all the support but “they got hurt, too.”
“This is about them, that they are the real victims here as well,” Fletcher said in the six-minute video, in which he encouraged supporters to donate to an online fundraising page for the two girls.
Fletcher suffered slash wounds while two other passengers, Rick Best, 53, and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai Meche, 23, were fatally stabbed as they tried to intervene as a man yelled “hate speech” at two African-American girls, one of whom was wearing an Islamic headscarf, police have said.
The alleged attacker, Jeremy Joseph Christian, 35, was arrested and is charged with aggravated murder, among other counts. He is being held without bail. Christian yelled at a court appearance on Tuesday about free speech and said “death to the enemies of America!”
“The little girl who had the misfortune that day to experience what happened on that MAX, her life is never going to be the same,” Fletcher said in the video posted Wednesday. “I want you to imagine that for a second, being the little girl on that MAX. This man is screaming at you — his face is a pile of knives. His body is a gun. Everything about him is cocked, loaded and ready to kill you,” he said. Fletcher and the two men who died have been called heroes for intervening. Portland’s mayor called the stabbing an act of bigotry and terrorism.
