WASHINGTON, D.C. - A woman who was caught on camera smashing windows of a Greyhound bus and attempting to run over the driver multiple times with her car, faced a judge Tuesday.
Mariana Silver, 20, was held without bond inside D.C. Superior Court. The 20-year-old and her mother cried as the judge watched the viral video on a laptop.
“I was saddened by the verdict. The first thing that kept going through my mind is that what Mariana needs is pills. Not prison.” her uncle, Seth Silver said.
Seth Silver was disappointed with the outcome and said that his niece suffers from Schizophrenia and was off pills at the time.
“When I saw it, I was like, ‘Can anybody see that this is not a normal crime?’" Seth Silver said. "If anybody saw the video on YouTube, Facebook, you can see that it was bizarre. But do you understand that the word ‘bizarre’ from a clinical point of view belongs to the people who are Schizophrenic?”
In the road rage incident that was caught on a camera Thursday evening, Silver is seen becoming irate. She smashed the window of a Greyhound bus and attempted to run over the driver multiple times with her car in Northeast DC, D.C. police said.
According to police, the incident started after a verbal argument between Silver and the bus driver. They said the 20-year-old illegally passed a Greyhound bus in an Audi A8 as they were moving in the same direction in the 1800 block of Bladensburg Road.
The bus driver tried to talk to Silver, but police said she grew irate and broke out into a verbal argument.
"You're a crazy driver, you need to get off the road," the bus driver was heard saying in the video.
That's when police said the woman went into the trunk of her gold car and pulled out a wooden baseball bat and began to hit the right side of Greyhound bus, cracking the windshield.
Silver was taken into custody Friday. She is charged with assault with a dangerous weapon.
Both her Defense Attorney and a Representative from the D.C. Department of Behavioral Health made a plea for the judge to release Silver to a voluntary Department of Behavioral Health crisis center.
Another one of Silver's uncles, Steven Silver, disagreed with the Tuesday decision. He told WUSA9 that he is also battling mental health: bipolar disorder.
“If they put her away, they’ll only medicate her. She won’t have the proper medication. She’ll be sleepy all the time. This is not the way we solve the problem of mental health issues in our community,” said Steve Silver.
Both her uncles also questioned the Greyhound bus driver’s role in this.
Greyhound released a statement last week:
The driver was able to complete the route by transporting customers to their scheduled stop at Union Station. Our standard protocol includes an interview with drivers following any incident, and we will continue cooperating with law enforcement on this matter as it is still under investigation. For additional information, please contact local authorities.
A judge plans to meet with both parties again on September 18.