Teenage girl attacked at McCurdy bus stop less than a week after previous attack at same location

Photo: Cindy White

The bus stop where two attacks have occurred within a week.

UPDATE: 5 p.m.

The Kelowna RCMP confirms one person was arrested following Thursday night's attack on a teenage girl at the bus stop near Highway 97 and McCurdy Road.

"An assault was reported and one suspect has been arrested. Currently still under investigation," said Kelowna RCMP spokesperson Mike Della-Paolera.

"Due to the age of those involved we will not be making any further comments."

ORIGINAL: 2:25 p.m.

A teenage girl was assaulted Thursday night at the same Kelowna bus stop where an international student was attacked a week prior.

The 15-year-old girl, who Castanet is not naming for safety reasons, was checking out the new arcade at the EnergyPlex Entertainment Centre near the McCurdy Bowling Centre Thursday night, when she and a friend decided to bus home.

The teen says they were waiting at the nearby bus stop when a group of about 30 teenagers came over.

“Two of them were talking to us and one of them was looking at me and saying 'Come on, get up, fight me,' and they were using some really not-nice words,” the teenager tells Castanet.

“She pulled a ski mask out of her backpack and put it over her head and kept going 'get up, fight me,'"

The girl said she and her friend tried to walk away, when the aggressive girl jumped on her back and started punching her in the face, knocking them to the ground. Others with the group were standing around filming the assault.

The teen's friend helped push the girl off, and the friend was punched as well.

The pair managed to run away, losing their phones in the process. But they tracked down a stranger and used their phone to call 911.

She says officers arrived quickly and found the assault suspect hiding in some nearby bushes. The teen says police arrested the girl.

She says she and her friend did nothing to provoke the attack and didn't know the group at all. She was left with some minor bruising on her face and a sore scalp from where her hair was pulled, but otherwise, she's feeling OK.

Less than a week prior to this attack, an international student, Gagandeep Singh, was attacked by a group of people at the very same bus stop, near Highway 97 and McCurdy Road.

That attack has received widespread condemnation across the community, and calls for it to be treated as a hate crime. Police said last week they'd identified a suspect group believed to have been involved in the attack, but no arrests are believed to have been made at this time.

The father of the teen in this most recent attack, Noel, says there are regular bush parties in the area, behind Scandia Golf & Games. They believe that the large group of teens had just left that area after a party had been broken up by police, and they were looking for trouble.

Noel and his daughter have their suspicions the attack could be related to the one the week prior, but they're not sure.

“When she got home, she was saying over and over, 'I thought I was going to die' and she was so scared,” Noel said. “As a parent, it's just so heartbreaking, and immediately the anger sets in, thinking somebody needs to pay for this and these people need to be held accountable.

“For it to not feel safe to even be at a bus stop ... Someone's going to get killed one of these weekends. That's two weekends in a row that there is assault and battery.”

Castanet has reached out to the Kelowna RCMP for more information about Thursday night's attack.