Several Sydney high school students will be suspended and potentially face legal repercussions after a video was posted to social media appearing to show them verbally abusing a disabled train passenger.
The video, viewed more than 350,000 times after being posted to Facebook on Monday, shows several students from Georges River College at Oatley, in Sydney's southwest, taunting a male passenger who the uploader described as disabled.
One male student is filmed shouting, making guttural noises and whistling at the passenger. "I am absolutely disgusted by what just happened," uploader Chelsea Jane said on Facebook.
"If I didn't fear for my own safety around these losers I would've gone down there to put a stop to it myself."
She said the verbal barrage made the passenger "extremely uncomfortable".
NSW police are investigating the incident, while the state education department says all students involved will be suspended and their parents notified."The man pulled out his phone to try to escape the harassment but the bullying continued until they got off at Hurstville," she said. She said several of the students "threatened to hit" her when they noticed she was filming.
"The behaviour of students involved in this incident is completely unacceptable," a departmental spokesman said in a statement.
The department has also issued an apology to the passenger.