AN at-risk 17-year-old girl was driven to tears onboard a Faifley bus after a man verbally abused her for not wearing a face covering even though she is medically exempt.

The incident, which occurred after midnight Wednesday, September 16 on the number 2 Faifley bus service, was witnessed by friends of the teenager and by several members of the public.

The man, who is said to be in his 40s, noticed the teen without the mask onboard the bus and began shouting, calling her an “embarrassment” and asked where her mask was. The 17-year-old was wearing a lanyard at the time to show that she is exempt from wearing a face covering.

Hayleigh Fallon, a friend who witnessed the incident told the Post: “My friend felt the need to explain her PTSD because this man would not stop and even though another friend and I kept trying to get the man to stop, asking him to turn round after he heard her story he still continued to call us ‘daft lassies’.

“Then to deflect he called our other guy friend a child molester because of his tattoos. My friend has just turned 21 and this man continues to shout at him.

“We got off at the stop at the bottom of Faifley and all she could do was cry and say she felt dirty and the worst thing he said as we were getting off the bus was why are you ‘out if you can’t cope’ as though to say people with PTSD and disabled people shouldn’t be allowed out to have fun.”

Hayleigh was elected as a member of the Scottish Youth Parliament in 2015, serving the Clydebank and Milngavie regions as MSYP.

She continued: “This is another reason why suicidal thoughts are happening in young people in these times, and people are committing suicide because people are making them feel unworthy of life and that’s how he made her feel.

“The government has also been talking about young people being the cause of the increase of cases. In every news article we are now being attacked even though we were told to eat out to help out and so on.”

Duncan Cameron, operations director for First Glasgow, said: “First Glasgow take incidents of this nature very seriously and we are reaching out to customer to investigate further.

“First Glasgow do not expect customers to behave in a hostile manner towards a staff member or a fellow customer - serious cases will be reported to the Police for their investigation. We have commenced an immediate investigation into this incident and so any further information the customer can provide us with to aid with this would be helpful.

“Our drivers do a difficult job in normal circumstances and have been a credit to company, the city and the wider industry with their efforts of keeping people moving throughout the pandemic.

“For passengers who have any anxiety or issues around being exempt from wearing one on public transport, we recommend downloading our Extra Help to Travel card from our website, which can be shown to drivers, staff and other passengers to let them know you are exempt from wearing one.”