People who carry on high-volume conversations on their mobile phones in public places are the worst. THE. WORST. Which makes Lakeysha Beard the worst of the worst of the worst. For sixteen solid hours after she boarded an Amtrak train in Oakland, KATU.com reports, she yapped loudly into her goddamned phone. SIXTEEN HOURS. And she was sitting in a designated “quiet car.”
After several passengers asked her, pleaded with her — begged her just out a sense of basic human decency — to stop yelling at the top of her lungs into the greasy little piece of plastic wedged inside her clammy paw, she completely ignored them. Then, a passenger who had reached the breaking point finally mustered the courage to stand up to her. So Beard “got aggressive.”
But wait! There’s a happy ending! These things never have happy endings, but this one does! Conductors stopped the train in Oregon, where hero members of the Salem Police Department were waiting to escort Beard off the train. She’d later say she felt “disrespected” by their medal-worthy actions, and didn’t understand why they did the absolutely wonderful, completely appropriate thing they did.
She was later charged with unspeakable crimes against humanity and sentenced to life on some distant planet where there are no reception bars, ever. (Or maybe it was just a disorderly conduct charge.) [KATU, screengrab via KATU.com]