A Brooklyn man says he spent five days in New York’s Rikers Island jail charged with second-degree attempted murder after a bus driver attacked him, but the tables turned when the driver’s face was accidentally cut.
Malachi Houston plans to seek $30 million in damages after claiming the bus driver violently attacked and choked him, but instead of justice, he’s now the one facing felony charges and career fallout after footage of the incident went viral, leading to his wrongful arrest.
The 27-year-old Bedford-Stuyvesant resident said he was charged with felony attempted murder following the June 8 altercation with bus driver Isaac Egharevba, 60, on the B99 bus that runs through Brooklyn.
In August, Houston filed two notices of claim against the city, the MTA, and the NYPD — a step before suing city agencies. The $30 million would compensate for the alleged attack, wrongful incarceration, loss of employment, as well as damage to his reputation, asserting that the charges against him were unjust.
Houston says he lost his job as a delivery driver and has struggled to find new employment after he became the subject of a manhunt when surveillance photos emerged in the news, accusing Houston of stabbing Egharevba in the neck.
Houston maintains his innocence while claiming the media got the story wrong, leading to his arrest.
“I have my life on a stand still right now,” Houston told The New York Post for an exclusive. “I want to clear my name. I want the truth to come out.”
A minute-long surveillance video obtained by the Post shows Houston briefly leaning into the driver’s seat area before the transit worker suddenly emerges from behind his seat and into the main cabin.
The door hits Houston, and then the driver grabs him by the neck and shoves him against the bus railing. The video shows the two locked in a heated struggle.
On the same day, both the police and Egharevba’s union issued statements claiming that the transit worker was stabbed during the incident.
Egharevba, a veteran bus operator with 17 years on the job, “was violently attacked” while “performing his duties as assigned” when an unknown assailant allegedly slashed him on the left side of his face, the TWU Local 100 union stated in a press release.
The statement included a photo of Egharevba in the hospital, showing him with bandages on his face wound and hooked up to monitors tracking his vital signs.
Houston said he had no choice but to take the bus after his son’s kindergarten graduation because the subway was out of service.
According to Houston’s notice of claim, passengers on the bus became “irate” because the driver took an unexplained detour.
When Houston first asked the bus driver to let him off, the man reportedly snapped, “Get out of my face,” according to Houston’s account.
Next, Houston said Egharevba allegedly began “screaming” at another passenger, prompting Houston to confront the driver again, asking, “Why are you not stopping the bus? Are you trying to take us hostage or something?”
“He started cursing and calling us names and stuff,” Houston claimed. “I got upset, and I cursed back at him, too. We got into a verbal dispute.”
The driver then slammed on the brakes, bringing the bus to an abrupt stop.
“I tapped the front of the bus like let me off … and that’s when he lunged out,” Houston claimed.
Houston said he reached into the driver’s area and tossed a piece of paper just before Egharevba attacked him. However, he insists that he never intended to strike the driver.
“He busted out of the booth, he hit me with [the booth door] and started attacking me,” Houston said. “He started choking me. He pinned me up against the railing.
“I had a bottle in my hand. The bottle broke in the midst of him charging at me,” Houston said.
Houston suggested that the broken bottle might have accidentally cut Egharevba during the brief altercation.
Houston says Egharevba choked him for about a minute before letting him go. Afterward, Houston fled to the back of the bus, forced open the doors, and escaped.
“I was panicking for my life at that moment,” Houston said.
Houston said that when police issued a warrant for his arrest, he turned himself in on July 8. He spent five days in Rikers Island before being released on July 13, after a grand jury decided not to indict him.
If the grand jury does not indict Houston by his next court date in October, prosecutors will have to drop the case entirely, according to a spokesman for the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office.
“I was attacked by a bus driver, almost strangled,” Houston said. “And they framed me and made it seem like I tried to kill him.”
Since the incident, Houston said he’s been taking cabs and rideshare services because “I’ve been scared to get on the bus.”
His lawyer, Mark Shirian, argued that the video clearly exonerates his client, showing that Houston was merely defending himself from an attack.
Egharevba “lost his temper [and] he voluntarily got himself involved in a physical altercation,” Shirian said. “He got himself injured and he’s now blaming it on the passenger.”
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority said, “This incident is under review,” and confirmed that Egharevba still works for the agency as a bus driver.
