Winnipeg RCMP say they don't know what prompted vicious attack on Greyhound bus
WINNIPEG - Police said Thursday they didn't know what prompted a passenger on a Greyhound bus heading to Winnipeg to viciously attack the man sitting next to him.
Passengers said the man repeatedly stabbed his seat-mate before beheading him and carrying the victim's head around the bus.
RCMP Staff Sgt. Steve Colwell wouldn't confirm those details, but did say a 40-year-old suspect was in RCMP custody and police were planning to interview him.
No charges were immediately laid.
Colwell said the behaviour of the passengers and driver probably prevented anyone else from being hurt.
"It's not something that happens regularly on a bus," he said. "You're sitting there enjoying your trip and then all of a sudden somebody gets stabbed. I imagine it would be pretty traumatic ... the way they acted was extraordinary."
Colwell said they "were very brave. They reacted swiftly, calmly in exiting the bus and as a result nobody else was injured."
Shocked passengers described the horrific attack as something incomprehensible.
One moment, the quiet man near the back of the bus was minding his own business. The man hadn't talked to anyone around him, and seemed to pay no attention to the younger fellow sitting next to him, who was listening to music on headphones.
The next moment, witnesses said, the older man stood up, still quiet, and repeatedly stabbed, then beheaded his younger victim.
"We heard this blood-curdling scream and turned around, and the guy was standing up, stabbing this guy repeatedly, like 40 or 50 times," Garnet Caton said Thursday from a hotel in Brandon, Man., where he and other passengers had been taken to rest.
"There was no rage or anything. He was like a robot, stabbing the guy."
Caton said the bus stopped and everyone scrambled to get out while the attacker started methodically carving up the victim's body, not paying attention to anyone else.
Caton and the driver shut the bus door from the outside while they waited for police to arrive.
"We put our bodies up against the door, waiting for him to come out ... and he went back and brought the head to the front and pretty much displayed it ... and dropped it on the ground in front of us," Caton said.
"All very calmly. He was wearing sunglasses. It was no big deal to him."
Fellow passenger Cody Olmstead from Kentville, N.S., also recalled the chilling scene.
"The guy came to the front of the door with buddy's head in his hands, decapitated. He dropped the head and went back and started cutting the body back up," Olmstead said.
When police arrived, the victim and his attacker were the only ones left on the bus, Colwell said.
"When attempts were made to have him exit and surrender to police were unsuccessful, additional resources including the RCMP emergency response team and negotiator team were called in to assist."
The man eventually tried to flee by breaking a bus window and jumping out, Colwell said.
"He was immediately subdued and arrested without incident and is currently in RCMP custody."
Both Olmstead and Caton said the attacker and the victim appeared not to know each other.
They said the attacker boarded the bus in Brandon Wednesday night. The victim, who Caton said appeared to be about 19, had been on the bus since Edmonton.
Police would not confirm the victim's age and said his name would not be released until his family had been notified. The suspect's name wasn't released either.
Federal Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day said the full weight of the law must be brought to bear on the perpetrator.
"We want to make sure the process is followed as aggressively as possible, the full legal process ...." Day said from Levis, Que., where Conservative MPs are gathered for a summer planning session.
"This particular incident, as horrific as it is, is obviously extremely rare. Certainly the horrific nature of it is probably one-of-a-kind in Canadian history."
Greyhound called the event tragic but isolated.
A company spokeswoman said bus travel is the safest mode of transportation, despite the fact bus stations do not have metal detectors and other security measures used at airports.
"Due to the rural nature of our network, airport-type security is not practical. It's a very different type of system," Abby Wambaugh said from Greyhound's corporate offices in Texas.
The bus was carrying 37 passengers and the driver to Winnipeg from Edmonton.
A portion of the east-bound Trans-Canada Highway was closed overnight as officers remained on the scene.
Passengers had not explanation either as to what might have prompted the attack. The suspect had been on the bus for only about an hour and didn't even sit near his victim at first.
"He sat in the front at first, everything was normal," Caton said.
"We went to the next stop and he got off and had a smoke with another young lady there. When he got on the bus again, he came to the back near where I was sitting.
"He put his bags in the overhead compartment. He didn't say a word to anybody. He seemed totally normal. About a half an hour later, we heard this blood-curdling scream."
So.... It's ok to shoot innocent people 50 times, or taser them 9 times, but when there is a REAL criminal, they NEGOTIATE (for 3 hours no less) rather then pumping him full of lead.
"It's not something that happens regularly on a bus,"
this is pretty horrifying i mean could you imagine being there. also if this dude had a knife why didnt anyone try to stop him?? a bus full of people and a dude has ONE KNIFE and they just calmly walk off the bus? i mean the kid was probably a goner but how can you resist the opportunity for some vigilante justice?I think you have to take into consideration that noone is paying any attention to him at the time this happened. I mean, who would? You're on a bus and you're doing your own kind of business to pass the time to get to the location. Next thing you know, the guy (and note: random guy) is brutally stabbing someone repeatedly. By the time you've noticed he's probably been stabbed 3/4/5 times.
Do you think this stuff happens in minutes? Try seconds instead, in that short amount of time you can't exactly think straight. So the whole having a guy swinging a severed head and knife at you within that short amount of time what are you gonna do? I'd do exactly what they would do get out of there and bar his way from getting to me possibly trapping him in the process.
thats what im saying! even if the dude is big, 2 average-large build guys could easily take him down. Maybe they will get stabbed, and the kid was probably not able to be saved, and you wouldn't want to kill the guy because he needs to suffer (which he probably never will because he is insane) but i mean at least you could beat the shit out of him for 10 minutes.
I don't know about that. You don't know how dangerous a psychopath could be - and the article described him as pretty large. And he has a knife, and he's strong enough and the knife is large enough to DECAPITATE someone with it. Think about it this way, sometimes it took executioners (who are big guys themselves) several blows with big battleaxes to remove heads! This guy must have been pretty scary.
Oh the decapitating part, yeah I agree it takes longer then seconds, but I mean't when he spontaneously started stabbing the guy you've only got seconds to react and within that time everyone was panicing. Must've took em' enough time to come down for him to decapitate him fully.
I think you could decapitate someone in 10-15 seconds if you were a really scary guy.
It doesn't matter how big the guy was! Psychopath or not, he's only human! Two or more people could have overtaken him, and at least gotten him away from the kid. Who gives a fuck if he's SCARY, he's cutting a kids head off on a bus full of people! What the fuck, man!
And this right here is the dumbest post of the entire year.
Feldschlacht IV do you have a family of hunters? Are you aware that hunters remove the heads of deer they kill? Do you know that a hunter can remove a deer's head in 30 seconds without being a psychopath?
besides what the fuck man, he already had the head in one hand when people tried to stop him.
regardless you're also implying that two bit heroics to save the guy whose head is already being removed is more important than trying to get everyone else off the bus and out of the way of this SHOCKING MUSCULAR PSYCHOPATH COVERED IN BLOOD WHO COULD START SLICING UP EVERYONE ELSE IN FRONT OF HIM.
OK, the psycho was stabbing the guy, and the guy in the seat in front of them saw it and yelled "Stop the bus! Everyone get the hell off!" and everyone did! That same guy lead a group of guys on to the bus to try to save the kid, but the psycho came at them with the knife in one hand and the severed head in the other. They booked it off the bus and locked the door.
A trucker stopped, handed our crowbars and wrenchs to some of the men, and they stood guard around the doors until the cops came. Meanwhile, the psycho tried stabbing through the doors, and severing limbs and showing the people outside what he was doing through the windows.
Yeah, I think the rest of the busload did all they could reasonably do.
Several reports say that after the bus was cleared, a group of guys did got back onto the bus to try to save the kid. The psycho came after them with a knife in one hand and the severed head in the other.
And, in a tight space with a knife, I think I could fend off 3 or 4 guys. I could do some serious damage with the knife, at the very least (unless one of the guys happens to be a well-trained marine or ninja or something). A regular Joe Schmuck would be gutted, however.
And, in a tight space with a knife, I think I could fend off 3 or 4 guys. I could do some serious damage with the knife, at the very least (unless one of the guys happens to be a well-trained marine or ninja or something). A regular Joe Schmuck would be gutted, however.
"We heard this bloodcurdling scream and turned around, and the guy was standing up, stabbing this guy repeatedly, like 40 or 50 times," Caton said from a hotel in Brandon, Manitoba, where he and other passengers had been taken to rest.
"There was no rage or anything. He was like a robot, stabbing the guy."
Caton said passengers raced from the bus but then he, the bus driver and a trucker at the scene re-boarded to see what was happening.
Caton said he saw the suspect had the victim on the floor of the bus and "was cutting his head off and pretty much gutting him."
He said the attacker calmly came to the front of the bus to show off the head.
"He dropped the head and went back and started cutting the body back up," said Cody Olmstead, a passenger from Kentville, Nova Scotia.
Yeah, this, especially when the guy with the knife is a large psychopath. we don't know whether the guys who were right next to him were young in shape guys or middle aged fatties or grandpas or what, either! I still think that GETTING EVERYONE OFF THE BUS is the best move instead of trying some two bit heroics against a big guy with a knife. I think that given the circumstances the guys did the only responsible thing which was evacuating the passengers and minimizing the amount of people who got hurt.
This does not sound like a man who's going to freak out if 4 or 5 other passengers come after him.
(It actually sounds like a man that would calmly slice and stab those passengers as they came at him. If I were to try to tackle the man, stabbing me in the stomach would be a good way of disabling me.)
you guys shouldn't be angry at Feldschalcht, I think he's just really upset about this, it upsets me too, and sometimes, I think I would try to save a victim like that. It's not trying to be a hero or anything, but really someone getting killed for no reason makes me sick to my core, and I don't think I could live with a calm conscience knowing that maybe, just maybe I could have done something to help him. I probably would get chopped too tough, but sometimes it's what I believe.
JUMP HIM
Feldman VI, one of the articles said that the police even said that they are glad that the people on the bus acted as they did. This psychopath took a life, as he intended, and to be honest it didn't seem like there was much hope of stopping him at all, short of someone three seats away who is a well trained marksman shooting him in the face before he landed the third or fouth knife-slash to the neck, which obviously didn't happen.
Don't make yourself to be so righteous and stop embezzling your indignation. Its disrespectful and short-sighted, especially when this is such a tragedy that we shouldn't be talking it about so non-chalantly, and especially when someone else had just lost a brother or a son and everyone agrees that it was an isolated incident nobody could truthfully do anything about.
Have you ever been in a fight? Have you ever broken up a fight or tried to shield someone from the angry blows of someone who is too drunk and too insane and is going ballistic? I don't think you'd be saying the sorts of things you are if you've ever been in a violent situation.
Alright this argument's really getting no where so everyone needs to shut the hell up about it. No one's opinions is going to change.Sure, because arguing is all about changing someones opinion. :fogetnah:
Man, mog is like what? 14? 15? I wouldn't be surprised if he is since he OBVIOUSLY doesn't understand the severity of the situation.
It's Aten, so it just got stupider.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/08/01/canada.beheading/index.htmlSURPRISE. Asian's have built up anger against Caucasians. Bring back the camps.
Hey guess what, the killer's Asian. That explains a whole lot. First Pearl Harbor, Virginia Tech massacre, and now this! I think America needs to make them Japanese internment camps again. The situation is out of control compared to the amount of violence in Caucasian communities.
no guys. that's not even the point. the guy stabbed the kid. the kid screamed. even if everyone on the bus got up IMMEDIATELY and attacked him, there would be no saving the kid. there would be no reason to try to take the guy down for the POSSIBILITY THAT HE MIGHT TAKE THE KID'S HEAD OFF. IT WOULDN'T BE LOGICAL.Yeah dude that's exactly what I said. The kid was gone, I mean didn't the guy start off stabbing him in the NECK? The kid was gone, maybe they could have stopped him being completely decapitated, but that's not the point. I mean, what if the guy just starting killing everyone?
seriously the only reason would be either to look like a hero or some FANTASY VIGILANTE JUSTICE.
The circumstances must not have been described very well, because I cannot see how a bus full of 37 people couldn't atleast TRY to stop this guy from going any further. I'm not saying HURR BE A HERO, but I mean alot of people jump on a guy and beat the shit out of him, while someone called the ambulance and BAM this could have been avoided.
Instead these people saw an innocent guy being murdered and ran away?
this is pretty horrifying i mean could you imagine being there. also if this dude had a knife why didnt anyone try to stop him?? a bus full of people and a dude has ONE KNIFE and they just calmly walk off the bus? i mean the kid was probably a goner but how can you resist the opportunity for some vigilante justice?
Has anyone taken into consideration, the hesitation noted in the 'bystander effect,' especially in real-world examples, may have something to do with 'legal ramifications'? So many times an individual tries to help someone in distress, only the individual becomes blamed by the 'authority figures' for causing the distress in the first place and punished for it.
MOG/gr/whoever, unless if you are psychologically NOT RIGHT or trained to specifically break this response, you wouldn't have done shit.
jesus man i've said multiple times that i cannot and would not do anything. calm down dude.
So yea HL maybe it is healthy for people to think 'I'm going to react' so that they actually do. I hate Mog to no end but I think he's got a point about how few people did something to assist and I credit him and GR for calling out the other people on the bus.
Also I'm going to look into it more but Bystander Apathy is probably far from universal and you are 'not programmed' wrong (hahah seriously) if you don't react that way.
I believe the proper term is different mindset, which shouldn't label you mentally ill.
But yeah, even with my knowledge on that, I think I still may have done something, even stupidly. I don't know. I admit it's probably unwise to say. I admit I couldn't do anything in a situation like that.
Well that's my point, you may have done something, but given the large group of people, you most likely wouldn't have, and neither would have anyone else. Unless if there was someone trained against that stuff or something, I would almost bet money this situation would have played out the same nearly every single time if you threw random groups of people in the same situation! It's not really their fault that they are trained (I GUESS THIS WORKS INSTEAD OF PROGRAMMED) to act that way in that situation.
Couldn't you argue that a different upbringing influences programming, though? Like you said, being in the military and whatnot influences programming, but couldn't one assume that growing up around gang violence, shootings, getting jumped, and being in constant fights (and you can't run away from any of them) might sort of alter that sort of programming?
OMG THERE WAS A TON OF PEOPLE ON THE BUS WHY DIDN'T THEY DO ANYTHING is fundamentally wrong from a psychological and mental standpoint.
Oh, I see what you're saying, I was just wondering. I don't want to say it's flat out FUNDAMENTALLY PSYCHOLOGICALLY wrong, though! I took some psychology classes myself, and I hate, hate slapping a psychological construct on everyone and assuming they're WIRED WRONG if they don't adhere to it, assuming it's not something like "Don't eat your kids", or "Mass murder" or something. I think you're going a bit far with that.
I don't want to say it's flat out FUNDAMENTALLY PSYCHOLOGICALLY wrong, though! I took some psychology classes myself, and I hate, hate slapping a psychological construct on everyone and assuming they're WIRED WRONG if they don't adhere to it, assuming it's not something like "Don't eat your kids", or "Mass murder" or something. I think you're going a bit far with that.
It sounds UNSCIENTIFIC to say, but you have to realize that many scientific constructs (especially a LOT of shit in psychology) are just shit some dude made up. That's the kiss of death to say that apparently, but it's truer than you think.
MOG where in Pittsburgh did you grow up? What neighborhood? Because unless it was Homewood, Liberty, or maybe the Hill District, you're full of shit.
Ugh forget it. I'm done trying to logically reason with you. Fine, maybe you would have done something, but I doubt it, because of the guys on the bus, there's probably some TOUGH GUYS who would have jumped in except for the fact that they were scared shitless.
SO YES MOG, tons of psychology is JUST SHIT SOME DUDE MADE UP. exactly MOG. this is why you are qualified to take on armed psychopaths.
Is this fighting you've been in the same fighting that you got into because the neighborhood thugs were jealous because you were so good looking?
Was this already covered or something because I really don't understand how a man cutting another man's head off for no reason on a bus is any worse or more disturbing than a man shooting up a college and killing a bunch of people.I dont recall someone saying it was. If they did, they are definitely wrong. But just because it's not more disturbing than another incident. Doesn't mean its not disturbing in general.
man i love how every crazy news article descends into a flame war *eats popcorn*
except this one i guess??This one kinda did, and then recovered.
man i love how every crazy news article descends into a flame war *eats popcorn*goddamn man everything about you is terrible
Oooh headphonics has done it now, this should be good to watch..... *eats an taco*
man to be honest i've given mog the benefit of the doubt A LOT (even though many of his posts piss me off and half the GWers are like "mog = shit")
but wow. this seriously makes me hate mog!
other than that though, just a little mog comment thing... even if psychology is mostly made up shit...there still remains that people (mostly everyone) have an initial instinct of fear and GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE BUS so yeah. you can't really dispute that mog.
also, i'm just waiting to see who the psycho is. they released who the kid is, but who is the psycho? :/
I honestly didn't think I was important enough for any of you to hate anymore
The psycho has already been revealed though, check Psyburns post.
Oh please. Don't flatter yourself, you don't have to be important to be hated. Someone can have just one post and be hated for it.
So.... It's ok to shoot innocent people 50 times, or taser them 9 times, but when there is a REAL criminal, they NEGOTIATE (for 3 hours no less) rather then pumping him full of lead.
According to one eyewitness, one police bullet ricocheted off the road and hit a woman in the leg and jaw.
That's pretty much what I was gonna say. Kudos.
She said McLean deserved his death by beheading on a Greyhound Bus last week.I just had to highlight this.