On November 4, 2013, 18-year-old Sasha Fleischman, an agender high school senior, was set on fire while asleep on AC Transit’s No. 57 bus in Oakland, California. A 16-year-old passenger, Richard Thomas, used a lighter to ignite the gauze skirt Fleischman was wearing. Fleischman survived with severe burns, Thomas was prosecuted and ultimately served five years in juvenile custody, and the case became the subject of Dashka Slater’s bestselling nonfiction book The 57 Bus.
What Happened on the Bus
Fleischman, a senior at Maybeck High School in Berkeley, boarded the AC Transit No. 57 bus home at around 5:00 p.m. and fell asleep. Thomas, a student at Oakland High School, was nearby with two other teenage boys. Bus surveillance footage captured Thomas lighting Fleischman’s skirt, which caught fire rapidly. Fleischman woke up screaming, and other passengers rushed to put out the flames.1The New York Times. The Fire on the 57 Bus in Oakland
An ambulance took Fleischman to the Bothin Burn Center at St. Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco. The burns were second- and third-degree and ran from thigh to calf, requiring multiple skin graft operations across a hospital stay of nearly three weeks.2CBS News San Francisco. Sasha Fleischman Expected Home for the Holiday After Lengthy Hospital Stay Fleischman was discharged on November 27, 2013, and returned to the family’s home in Oakland’s Glenview neighborhood.3SFGate. Burned Teen Sasha Fleischman Released From Hospital
Thomas was arrested the next day, November 5, after investigators reviewed the surveillance video.4NBC Bay Area. Richard Thomas, Sasha Fleischman Suspect, to Be Tried as Adult
Who Sasha Fleischman Is
Fleischman identifies as agender, meaning they do not identify as male or female, and uses they/them pronouns. Born Luke Fleischman, Sasha had begun exploring their gender identity before the attack, researching the term “genderqueer” before settling on the agender label. Wearing skirts was a significant part of how Fleischman expressed that identity, and Fleischman told reporters after the attack that they intended to keep wearing them. “That’s something that I’m not going to give up. It’s a big part of who I am.”5The Advocate. Agender Teen Hate Crime Victim Happy to Be Home6NBC Bay Area. Sasha Fleischman Weighs Future as Agender Activist
Was It a Hate Crime?
Whether the attack qualified as a hate crime became a central dispute. According to Oakland police court documents, Thomas admitted to investigators that he set the garment on fire because he was “homophobic.”7San Francisco Chronicle. Teen Charged in Attack of Agender Teen to Be Tried as Adult Defense attorney William DuBois later disputed that account, saying Thomas denied making the statement and alleging that officers had “browbeat” the teenager during interrogation in a locked room.8SFGate. Lawyer: Fire Attack on Sasha Fleischman a Prank DuBois described the act as a reckless prank, said Thomas “doesn’t even know how to spell homophobic, let alone be homophobic,” and noted that Thomas had gay family members.9NBC Bay Area. Sasha Fleischman Suspect Richard Thomas Pleads No Contest, Sentenced to 7 Years
California law explicitly includes gender identity and gender expression as protected categories. Penal Code § 422.55 defines a hate crime as a criminal act committed because of the victim’s actual or perceived characteristics, and § 422.56(c) defines “gender” to encompass biological sex, gender identity, and gender expression. In 2013, the same year as the attack, the California Department of Justice added “anti-gender nonconforming” as a distinct bias subcategory in its hate crime reporting, separate from “anti-transgender.”10Williams Institute, UCLA School of Law. Gender Identity Hate Crimes in California
The Charges, Plea, and Sentence
Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley charged Thomas as an adult with aggravated mayhem and felony assault, both with hate crime enhancements. O’Malley described the act as “violent and senseless criminal conduct” that was “intentional and callous.”11CBS News. Teen Charged With Hate Crimes After Allegedly Setting Gender Identity Activist Aflame on Bus The charges carried a potential life sentence.
DuBois moved to transfer the case to juvenile court, arguing that a life sentence for a 16-year-old would be cruel and unusual punishment and that juvenile court would offer rehabilitation. He called the decision to charge Thomas as an adult “unconstitutional.”12Oakland North. Motion Filed to Send Sasha Fleischman Case to Juvenile Court On January 16, 2014, visiting Judge J. Richard Couzens denied the motion, finding the DA had acted within her authority and the sentencing argument was premature.13CBS News San Francisco. Bid to Prosecute AC Transit Burning Suspect in Juvenile Court Denied
In October 2014, Thomas pleaded no contest to felony assault with an enhancement for inflicting great bodily injury. The aggravated mayhem charge and the hate crime enhancements were dropped as part of the plea agreement.14KQED. Juvenile Who Lit Agender Teen on Fire Gets Reduced Sentence On November 14, 2014, he was sentenced to seven years in a California juvenile facility, with a provision allowing a judge to cut the sentence to five years for good behavior.15NBC Bay Area. Teen Charged With Fire Attack on Bus Gets 7 Years
On June 29, 2015, three days before Thomas turned 18, Alameda County Judge Paul Delucchi reduced the sentence to five years of confinement, keeping Thomas entirely within the juvenile system and off any track to adult prison. Delucchi cited positive reports from the Department of Juvenile Justice and told Thomas his statements “show a level of maturity that you didn’t exhibit during the offense.” DuBois told the court Thomas had expressed “sincere and profound regret” in letters written within 48 hours of his arrest and continued to call the act a “stupid prank gone horribly wrong.”16Mercury News. Oakland Teen Convicted of Burning Agender Teen on Bus Resentenced Before 18th Birthday
Thomas was released in June 2018, weeks before his 21st birthday, having served the reduced sentence entirely in juvenile custody.17BD Spotlight. The 57 Bus
How Sasha and the Family Responded
From early in the case, Fleischman said publicly they did not want Thomas to face overly harsh punishment. “I don’t want to be too harsh,” Fleischman told the Christian Science Monitor. “He’s a 16-year-old kid, and 16-year-old kids are kind of dumb.”18Christian Science Monitor. Calif. Teen Set on Fire Says Punishment Shouldn’t Be Too Harsh
Sasha’s mother, Debbie Crandall, and father, Karl Fleischman, consistently described the attack as impulsive and unpremeditated and said they were uncomfortable with Thomas being prosecuted as an adult. The two families met before a court hearing, where Thomas’s mother approached the Fleischmans to apologize. Crandall called the encounter “a healing experience.”19Mercury News. Burned Oakland Teen’s Mother Teaches Power of Forgiveness At the 2015 resentencing hearing, Karl Fleischman told the judge the family did not want Thomas in adult prison: “What he did was a horrible thing, obviously, but our kid is still with us and has been able to go on with their life and I want that for Richard too.”20Marin Independent Journal. Teen Who Set Youth’s Skirt on Fire Gets Second Chance
The National Center for Lesbian Rights and the Transgender Law Center also petitioned the DA’s office to reconsider adult sanctions.20Marin Independent Journal. Teen Who Set Youth’s Skirt on Fire Gets Second Chance At Maybeck High School, roughly half the student body wore skirts or dresses to class on November 8 for “Skirts for Sasha Day.”21East Bay Times. Students at Maybeck High School in Berkeley Wear Dresses and Skirts During Skirt for Sasha Day
The 57 Bus Book
The case gained a much larger audience with the 2017 publication of The 57 Bus: A True Story of Two Teenagers and the Crime That Changed Their Lives by journalist Dashka Slater. Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, the book grew out of an article Slater wrote for the New York Times Magazine and drew on interviews, social media posts, surveillance footage, and public records to tell the stories of both Sasha and Richard.22BookPage. Interview With Dashka Slater It explores race, class, gender identity, forgiveness, and the juvenile justice system, and discusses restorative justice as an alternative to purely punitive approaches.23Macmillan. The 57 Bus
The 57 Bus became a New York Times bestseller and received the ALA Stonewall Book Award for children’s and young adult literature. TIME named it one of the best YA books of all time, and Kirkus Reviews listed it among the best books of the 21st century. It was also a finalist for the YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.23Macmillan. The 57 Bus
Book Bans and Challenges
The book has been challenged or banned in at least nine states, including Idaho, Iowa, Texas, Florida, New Jersey, Kansas, South Carolina, Wisconsin, and Tennessee. In Tennessee, it was named one of the five most-challenged books statewide, and Knox County Schools removed it in December 2024 as one of 48 titles pulled to comply with the state’s Age-Appropriate Materials Act, with the district labeling it “patently offensive.”24Knox News. The 57 Bus Author Dashka Slater on School Book Bans Teachers and parents in the district publicly objected to the removal.25Marshall University Libraries. The 57 Bus – Banned Books