A man in a wheelchair stops the Blue Line today

A man in a wheelchair sat on the tracks of my Blue Line train today, near the Pico/Chick Hearn station around noon, with no intention of moving.

The train seemed more delayed than usual at the stoplight, when the train’s conductor announced that the man had been playing chicken with several other Blue Line trains and had decided to park himself right in our path.

This might sound cruel, but all I could think of was that I was going to be late to work. Other passengers crowded around the conductor’s cabin to get a look at the man who was holding up the train. The man sitting next to me closed his Bible and joined them. The conductor opened the window partition separating him from the passengers so they could get a better view.

“Let me out, I’ll move him,” a goateed man in denim shorts shouted.

The Blue Line on the opposite side of the tracks pulled next to our compartment and its conductor exchanged a few words with ours.

“Man, I have to go to the bathroom, I’m hungry” a passenger who had been waiting near the doors announced.

On the PA system the conductor said, “I think he wants us to take him out of his misery, but we’re not going to do him the pleasure” adding that the L.A. County Sheriff’s were on their way.

“If it was one of us, they’d be here in a minute,” a man sitting near the front of the compartment said, adding that “if it were in Long Beach, they’d just run him over.”

After only a few minutes of delay, the sheriffs came and took the man away. Apparently the man just wanted a cigarette. 

--Lauren Williams

photo: Passengers on the Blue Line after a 1993 incident in which the train hit an SUV. By Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times