TransMilenio guard killed in Soacha after defending colleague from knife attack
Cristian Garzón, 27, died from stab wounds at Terreros station while intervening to protect a colleague. Police arrested the alleged attacker.
"He is a hero": TransMilenio guard killed while protecting colleague in Soacha
Cristian Garzón, a 27-year-old security guard, lost his life after sustaining knife wounds at the Terreros TransMilenio station in Soacha, after intervening to defend a colleague during a violent assault. According to pulzo.com, the worker who survived the attack described him with a direct phrase: "He is a hero".
The incident occurred when an individual attempted to enter the station irregularly and launched a physical assault against the guard. Upon perceiving the danger, Garzón intervened immediately. The attacker wounded him with a knife. His colleagues promptly transported him to a nearby medical centre, but his injuries were too severe and the young man died shortly after.
The surviving colleague recounted the moment to Noticias RCN with evident distress. "He is a hero. It should not have been him. At that moment I was not thinking about my baby. I had a hot head. And I believe he was thinking that my daughter was waiting for me at home. An 18-month-old girl would be without her mother right now", she stated. The woman asserted that Garzón would have acted thinking of her small daughter, who was waiting for her at the end of her shift.
What exacerbates the tragic backdrop is that Garzón had returned to work just four days before his death, after completing medical leave resulting from a previous assault he had suffered whilst performing his duties. His colleague was clear on this point: the security guards in the system face violence routinely. "Assaults like these happen daily", she lamented, and added: "I do not know what users think. I do not know if they think that one does not have a heart, that no one is waiting for you at home or that you are a machine, that you do not feel".
TransMilenio issued a statement categorically rejecting the events. The entity stressed that no dispute related to system access can justify the use of violence: "Human life has an invaluable worth and cannot be worth less than a fare", it noted in its official statement.
The National Police reported that the alleged perpetrator of the attack was captured and placed at the disposal of judicial authorities to begin the corresponding criminal proceedings. The investigation continues.
For his colleagues, Garzón was a dedicated worker. For the woman who was beside him at the moment of the attack, he was the one who decided to act when she was exposed to suffering greater harm. His death reopens the debate on the extreme risks faced by those working in safety and coexistence within the capital's mass transit system and its metropolitan area.
Family members and colleagues remember him as a man who, in the decisive moment, chose to protect another before protecting himself.
Source: Google News CO — Bogotá