Manners questioned
But when Ennis accused the middle schooler of having worse manners than the couple's 5-year-old daughter, McDaniels resumed taunting them with an expletive-filled tirade, Kreager said.
"I was thinking, `Look, you can have the seat,'" Kreager said. "Nakita swung and struck me in the face. ... There was an uproar. A female's legs came up out of a seat on the left-hand side. The noise level went from loud to even louder. I heard a male yelling `Stop!' from the front of the bus."
Kreager said she crawled out of the bus and began to regroup when students began moving to the front of the bus to get the driver to open the door. Kreager said that Ennis tried to barricade the door shut from the outside until she told him to release the door so the teenagers could get out.
`What's good?'
When McDaniels emerged, she repeated "what's good?" - slang for "let's go, let's fight," Kreager said.
Kreager said she began backing up to prepare herself for an attack, while Ennis apparently faced off with other students.
"Nakita and a female tackled me," Kreager said. "I was in the gutter with my hands over my face, trying to block the punches. I felt a piercing in my head. ... There were at least five to 10, maybe seven to 10, students around me."
Kreager said the punches and kicks became "harder and harder" until someone pulled her head up by her hair and McDaniels ordered someone to kick her.
Eye `swelled shut'
"My eye immediately swelled shut," she said. "I couldn't see."
Three of the five defense attorneys have cross-examined Kreager. Although all of them either suggested or asserted during opening statements that Kreager provoked the attack, none of the three attorneys so far has challenged Kreager's testimony that McDaniels started the fight.
Defense attorneys mostly tried to attack Kreager's character, pointing to previous arrests, mental health problems and uncooperative behavior at the hospital.
For the most part, Circuit Judge David W. Young cut off such questioning as irrelevant.
Prosecutors began their case yesterday by playing 911 calls made by panicked and breathless witnesses who described the chaos on West 33rd Street.
"There's a riot, a huge riot on the bus," said one 911 caller, who was panting during the call. "Everyone is fighting. People are flying out windows."
melissa.harris@baltsun.com
