Another violent teen robbery on BART in Oakland — but this time, witness saves day

Leonard Brown recently stopped a BART robbery. Photographed at Montgomery Street station in San Francisco, Calif.on Wednesday, July 5, 2017. Leonard Brown recently stopped a BART robbery. Photographed at Montgomery Street station in San Francisco, Calif.on Wednesday, July 5, 2017. Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 23 Caption Close Another violent teen robbery on BART in Oakland — but this time, witness saves day 1 / 23 Back to Gallery

For the second time in three months, a large group of teenagers committed a violent robbery at BART’s Coliseum Station in Oakland, snatching a phone from a woman and then punching and kicking a 62-year-old passenger who chased them and demanded the return of the device, police and witnesses said.

The latest attack — which occurred during the evening commute Friday — had a more positive ending than the first one. The rider who took action wasn’t badly hurt and managed to retrieve the iPhone 7 for the victim, while at least 10 fleeing juveniles were intercepted by a special BART team dedicated to fighting robberies on the transit system.

“The whole thing could not have worked out better, right?” the victim, a San Francisco tech worker who asked that her name be withheld for safety reasons, said Wednesday.

The hero, off-duty security guard Leonard Brown, brushed off praise from the woman, saying, “This is not my first rodeo.”

The incident again highlighted BART’s challenge in responding to a surge in robberies, which were up 45 percent in the first quarter of the year compared with the same period in 2016. It also raised questions about why BART didn’t publicize the crime to alert riders and seek additional witnesses.

After a mob of teens robbed and beat riders at the same station on April 22, BART did not immediately announce what had happened, even though the agency communicates with customers in a number of ways, including a website, an app, email alerts, a Facebook account and Twitter feeds. The Chronicle was first to report the robbery two days later.

At that time, BART pointed out that a summary of the incident had appeared in a daily crime log available to reporters over email. After that, media outlets began paying more attention to the logs and reporting the crimes listed on them. A month ago, the agency stopped producing and sharing the logs.

Serious crimes on the system now appear on an interactive mapping website, CrimeMapping.com, but with minimal details. Friday’s attack is listed only as a strong-arm robbery that occurred at Coliseum Station at 6:23 p.m.

A BART spokesman, Taylor Huckaby, said the move to the interactive mapping site was “absolutely transparent.” Users can search for crimes by address, time frame and category. Several big police departments in the Bay Area use the free service.

The victim of Friday’s robbery said she had been anxious riding BART after the April robbery, but didn’t fear she was in trouble when a group of teenagers invited her to sit in the only empty seat in a car on a train bound for the Warm Springs/South Fremont Station. When the train stopped at Coliseum Station, she said, one of the juveniles grabbed the phone and they all ran.

That’s when Brown, who was unarmed and headed to Oakland International Airport to pick up a rental car, got involved. He said that as the teens sprinted off the BART car, he noticed one of them shove the iPhone down his pants.

Brown said he gave chase and confronted the group in front of an elevator, still on the platform, where he demanded the phone back from the boy he knew had stolen it. A scuffle ensued, and Brown was kicked and punched while on the ground by the thief and several of his friends, according to police and witnesses.

To the shock of the victim, Brown somehow emerged from the pile holding the unscathed iPhone. As the teens fled, Brown reached into a plastic bag containing his dinner from Panda Express and pulled out a napkin that he used to wipe up specks of his own blood from the concrete platform.

“I didn’t want anybody to catch my pathogens,” said Brown, who said he suffered a cut finger as well as bruises.

Huckaby said BART officers surrounded a group of 10 to 13 teenagers as they tried to escape into the surrounding neighborhood. The suspects were detained and photographed, but released to their parents after witnesses could not identify who had taken the phone. The investigation is continuing.

BART police were “in the process” of reviewing surveillance video, Huckaby said. After The Chronicle revealed last year that most of the cameras on BART trains were decoys, the agency last week said it had outfitted all 669 cars with working cameras.

In the April robbery, which prompted increased police patrols, at least 40 juveniles swarmed a train stopped at Coliseum Station after jumping the fare gates, then vanished into the night after robbing and beating passengers.

BART later made at least two arrests, though it wasn’t immediately clear Wednesday how many of the suspects currently face charges. It also wasn’t clear if any of the juveniles detained Friday might be considered suspects in the first robbery as well.

Three members of a Dublin family who were accosted in April have filed legal claims, precursors to lawsuits, seeking $3 million while arguing BART could have prevented the incident with more stringent security measures.

Michael Bodley is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mbodley@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @michael_bodley

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