Cops: Suspect surrenders in trolley beating

A week after his face was plastered across social media, the man accused of brutally beating a teen on a SEPTA trolley turned himself in to police.

Damon Oliver, 40, surrendered to East Detectives on Wednesday, police said. He has been charged with terroristic threats, simple assault and reckless endangerment after allegedly assaulting a 17-year-old girl on the Route 15 Trolley near Girard Avenue and 7th Street in North Philly on Jan. 21.

Oliver, a North Philly resident, works for the city's Parks and Recreation Department, according to spokeswoman Krystle Parram.

The girl injured in the attack, Shay, told the Daily News that her attacker bashed her in the head at least three times, breaking her nose and blackening her eye. She asked that her last name be withheld by the People Paper.

Shay said the beating was spurred by an argument, apparently over her backpack bumping into her assailant after she boarded the trolley on her way to Bodine High School for International Affairs.

"There must be mental issues involved," Foi Wharton, Shay's mom, told the Daily News. "Who would do that? It was a grown man who hit a child. He not only violated her as a woman, he violated her as a child. To be violated by a man at such a young age, she'll have emotional scars forever."

Ironically, the attack happened two days before Shay's last at Bodine; her family recently moved to Montgomery County.

Court records show Oliver apparently has a history of violence: he was found guilty of aggravated assault in 1994, and pleaded guilty to simple assault in 2003 and 2006.