PORT ANGELES, Wash. — The 80-year-old Port Angeles woman brutally attacked on a city bus tells KIRO 7 she refuses to be a victim. Angie Olsen’s alleged attacker made his first appearance Thursday in Clallam County Court.
The surveillance video from that horrific Port Angeles city bus ride Saturday is hard to watch and maybe even harder to hear. Olsen's terrified screams are chilling.
"He held me around the neck for a few seconds and knocked me around the back of the skull,” she told us Thursday.
Olsen -- a strong-willed independent single mom to four grown boys with kids and grandkids of their own -- says Riley White was just an acquaintance. They sometimes rode the same bus but she hadn't seen him in weeks.
Her son Wesley Olsen showed us where just three blocks from their home White allegedly attacked her.
"It just traumatized me,” Wesley said.
"He wanted to beat on me, he wanted to maim me,” Olsen told KIRO 7.
Port Angeles police say it was the bus driver's quick thinking-- pushing everyone including Olsen out the back of the bus, then disabling the battery up front before jumping out and trapping White inside -- that likely saved lives, at the very least Olsen's.
"He was giving me holy hell about something,’ I should kill you,’ something like that,” Olsen remembered.
She says she's feeling better every day and showed up in court Thursday to face Riley White. Olsen's grandson drove her to the hearing but she says she has plans to ride the bus again. Before Saturday she told us she had never had an enemy.
"I'm a very likable person," Olsen said, smiling despite the big purple bruise around her eye and the stitches on her eyebrow.
At the hearing the state asked for White's bail to be increased to $100,000, but the judge elected to keep it at $30,000, which White's attorney says he will not be able to pay anyway. His arraignment is set for June 10.
A GoFundMe account was set up for Olsen. Click here for the link.