A suspect who stabbed a Brooklyn MTA bus driver in a fit of rage in broad daylight last month was indicted on attempted murder charges but acquitted after a grand jury failed to bring an indictment in time, police and prosecutors said.
Authorities announced Monday that 27-year-old Malachi Houston was arrested July 8 and charged with attempted murder for stabbing a 60-year-old driver in the neck with a knife on a B99 bus a month ago at Pitkin and Alabama avenues in East New York.
But Houston was ultimately released after a Brooklyn jury failed to indict him within the six-day deadline, the district attorney’s office said.
“The prosecution presented evidence to the grand jury, but the grand jury took no action,” a spokesperson for the district attorney’s office said in a statement. “The investigation is ongoing and additional evidence may be presented to the grand jury.”
According to police, the violence erupted at 11:30 a.m. on June 8 after Houston became enraged over “the direction of the bus” and a violent altercation ensued.
Witnesses said Houston and the driver got into a scuffle that police and law enforcement sources said ended with the suspect stabbing the driver.
Police said the gunman got off the bus and fled, but the bleeding victim was taken by paramedics to Brookdale University Medical Center in stable condition.
“There was a fight between the bus driver and a passenger,” an eyewitness, who asked not to be named, told The Post at the time. “They were exchanging blows. The fight ended. [the suspect] I opened the back door and started driving away.”
Bloodstains were found on the floor near the door and on the glass partition surrounding the driver’s seat.
Police said Houston, who lives in the area, has been arrested three times, including in May for unlawful possession of a controlled substance and in March for possession of a forged document.
He was also arrested in 2017 on a grand larceny charge, police said.
A bus driver who identified himself as D. McClain called on the city to provide “further protections” for drivers.
“People are coming to work to do a job, and the public is sometimes out of control,” McClain said shortly after the attack. “You have emotionally unstable people on the buses, and you can’t predict how they’re going to react.”
Two more bus drivers were attacked in separate incidents in the city the previous day, police sources said.
The female bus driver from East New York was riding on a B6 bus around 11:30 a.m. on June 7 when she was struck by a passenger who claimed she had missed the bus as she was getting off.
Shortly after, the driver of a B44 bus traveling at New York and Foster avenues was assaulted and had liquid thrown on him after asking a passenger to fold up their stroller before boarding the bus around noon, sources said.
