The Utah Transit Authority worker who confronted several women on a FrontRunner train about their tampons and reportedly equated them to porn stars earlier this week is “no longer employed” with the organization, according to a statement released Friday.
UTA spokesman Carl Arky declined to say whether the employee quit or was fired. He had been on paid leave since Wednesday.
The man — whose name Arky also declined to release because the encounter was a personnel issue, not a legal one — sparked outrage after a woman posted a video of the confrontation on Facebook. The man first encountered the group when two of the women went to the train’s restroom to share menstrual supplies.
One of those women, Camille Hoerner, said the man started shaking the door and yelling, “Only one at a time!”
Frightened, they left the restroom and returned to their seats, but since one of the women hadn’t had a chance to use the restroom, two other women agreed to escort her a second time. That time, the worker approached them once they came back to their seats.
During the heated exchange, the man asked the women, who said they went together to exchange tampons, why all three needed to be in the restroom for that long. “Were you putting them in each other?”
According to the statement from UTA, interim Executive Director Steve Meyer has since spoken to the women about their experience and apologized “on behalf of the agency for the egregious and regrettable behavior they experienced.”
One of the women on the train, Christy Atkinson, started a petition to have the train worker fired. It had garnered more than half the 10,000-signature goal by Friday afternoon.
Two of the women involved — Lexi Beckstead and Alyssa Childs — told The Salt Lake Tribune late Friday that they were relieved the man was no longer working on the train, but both said they hoped UTA would do more to increase riders' safety.
For instance, UTA officials told the pair there were no official video or audio recordings of the confrontation. That, they said, needs to change. The women also said there should be more lighting on trains and more robust security, as well as a more efficient way to notify authorities if something goes wrong, like an emergency response button.
“I’m still upset about what he said to us. But him as a person, that’s not my concern anymore,” said Childs, who says she had been sexually harassed on a train before this encounter. “My concern now is UTA changing things and actually making an effort to make it safer for everyone on the train.”
