Photo by Adam Fagen.

A woman has been taken into custody after she seemingly attempted to snatch a baby out of her stroller on a Metro train this morning.

Around 9:34 this morning, a mom was sitting with her two-year-old on a busy Orange Line train when another woman tried to pull the little girl out of her stroller. The child was strapped in, and a fellow passenger successfully intervened to pull the woman off before she could get her out, according to a Metro Transit Police spokesman. The child wasn’t injured in the incident.

“Out of nowhere, I saw this baby in the air, and a woman was screaming ‘my baby, my baby’ ” said Brandon Carroll, who was in the car heading to work near Metro Center. “At first I thought she was having a seizure or something, because you just don’t think, ‘oh someone is trying to steal a baby.’ And then it clicked.”

Tara Young boarded the train at the Court House station alongside the unidentified mother and daughter. She had a passing thought that the daughter was cute before heading into her own head space, though at some point she noticed the perpetrator mumbling.

Then, Young overheard the mom tell the second woman not to touch her daughter. “I saw the baby rising and the mom started screaming,” she said.

Still disturbed and running off adrenaline from the encounter, Carroll recounted how a large man quickly sprung into action, grabbing the woman by the neck and pushing her down. The man announced to the shocked train passengers that the woman was resisting and a group of people, including Carroll, came to his aid to make sure she couldn’t move.

“She had her knuckles clenched and was trying to get away,” Carroll said, adding that it looked like she may have been “on some kind of drug.” Throughout the entire thing, the perpetrator didn’t say anything. The frightened mother and child, though, were sobbing.

Young and another passenger simultaneously worked to comfort the mom and alert Metro to the emergency. They pushed the emergency intercom and attempted to report what had happened, but Young described the response as lackluster. It took 30 seconds for the conductor to respond the first time, and he didn’t update the worried passengers as they made their way along the long stretch over the river, she said.

When the train pulled in to the Foggy Bottom station, a couple of Metro employees came to the car, Carroll said, but the group of passengers didn’t want to let the woman go until they were sure she wouldn’t get away.

As passengers streamed off the train and away from the last few cars, Ben Kostrzewa, who had been three cars away at the time of the incident, walked over to the commotion.

He confirmed that the woman seemed “kind of out of it” and was being held in a bear hug while five or six other large men stood around. The mother was nearby with another crowd of people, and he asked if she needed any help. “She was really distraught, but said ‘no, I’m ok. The baby’s ok.'”

About five minutes later, according to Carroll and Kostrzewa, the first Metro Transit Police officer arrived. According to Young, though, it took 10 minutes for a second officer to come and another 20 for a larger group. “It felt like too long,” she said, adding that they let the group of witnesses go without asking for an account. “It wasn’t very comforting as a Metro rider.”

WMATA said the suspect is now being questioned by D.C. Police. A spokeswoman for MPD confirmed that they responded to an incident at 22nd and I Streets, but couldn’t say if it was the attempted abduction or if the suspect has been charged.

“I was just reading a book, had my headphones in, and I see a baby get lifted. It was the most surreal thing,” Carroll said. “It all happened very fast.”

If that first guy hadn’t come to her aid, or if there were fewer people around to help, things might have ended very differently, the passengers said. “The civilian response was ten times better than the official Metro response,” Young said. “I’m so grateful to those guys who acted.”

This post has been updated.