Bus Rider Decapitates Fellow Passenger

FSTargetDrone · Post by **FSTargetDrone** » 2008-07-31 10:48am

Normally I don't post, let alone read these kinds of horrific stories, but... Holy fuck (WARNING -- very graphic details!):

Man decapitates passenger aboard Greyhound bus in Manitoba: witness
Bus en route to Winnipeg from Edmonton;

story contains graphic details

Last Updated: Thursday, July 31, 2008 | 8:35 AM ET

A passenger repeatedly stabbed and then decapitated another person aboard a Greyhound bus travelling through Manitoba overnight, a witness said Thursday.

RCMP would not confirm the reports, only saying that a "major incident" took place around 9 p.m. Wednesday evening on the bus as it drove along the Trans-Canada Highway en route to Winnipeg from Edmonton. A man has been taken into custody, but police remained tight-lipped about the case.

The bus pulled over west of Portage la Prairie, a city about 85 kilometres west of Winnipeg.

Passenger Garnet Caton told CBC News on Thursday that the attacker had been sitting beside the victim, who was asleep, with his headphones on.

Caton said he heard a "blood-curdling scream" and saw the man holding a large "Rambo" hunting knife above the victim, "continually stabbing him in the chest area," he said.

"He must have stabbed him 50 times or 60 times," said Caton.
Attacker earlier appeared normal

"The whole time, the attacker was over top of the victim. He is continually cutting him. I think the victim was gone at that point," Caton said.

Caton said the attacker appeared "totally normal" earlier in the journey after boarding around Brandon, and chatted with a young woman as he smoked a cigarette during a break.

But when he got back on the bus, he moved his belongings from the front to a seat beside the victim in the back and about 20 minutes later began attacking the man, said Caton. "He didn't say anything to the victim at all," said Caton.

Once the bus pulled over and more than 30 passengers fled, Caton, the driver and a trucker who had stopped at the scene boarded the vehicle to see if the victim was still alive.

"When we came back on the bus, it was visible at the end of the bus he was cutting the guy's head off and pretty much gutting him up," said Caton.

The attacker ran at them, Caton said, and they ran out of the bus, holding the door shut as he tried to slash at the trio.

Acted 'like a robot'

When the attacker began fiddling with buttons and trying to drive the bus, Caton says the driver disabled the vehicle.

"While we were watching the door, he calmly walks up to the front with the head in his hand and the knife and just calmly stares at us and drops the head right in front of us," said Caton.

Caton described the attacker as surprisingly calm. "It was like he was at the beach or something. There was no rage in him. He wasn't swearing or cursing or anything. It was just like he was a robot or something."

Police cruisers arrived about 10 minutes later, he estimates, and officers began directing passengers to school buses to take them to a hotel in Brandon. The attacker picked up the head.

"While we were waiting on the side of the road, he was taunting the police with the head in his hand," said Caton.

'Pretty traumatic'

A six-year-old and other children were among the passengers who saw the gruesome incident unfold, said Caton.

"It was pretty traumatic," he said, adding that some passengers said they have been unable to sleep or eat since it happened.

A chaplain and crisis team were on hand to counsel passengers at the hotel, he said.

Officers were still at the scene early Thursday and brought portable search lights to examine the bus, the CBC's Sean Kavanagh reported. Traffic was being rerouted to a side road.

Abby Wambaugh, media relations spokeswoman for Greyhound Canada, said there were 37 passengers and a driver aboard the bus.

She would not comment on what happened on the bus.

"I don't want to compromise the investigation, so any details need to be confirmed by the police," she said.

With files from the Canadian Press

I can't imagine what that horror show must have looked like.

Ubiquitous · Post by **Ubiquitous** » 2008-07-31 12:22pm

/Jesus that's ... disgusting. What would make a guy flip like that

CaptainZoidberg · Post by **CaptainZoidberg** » 2008-07-31 12:29pm

And why would his facial expressions be flat? One would at least imagine that he's conditioned to be repulsed by a decapitated head, so he wouldn't be acting "like a robot".

Catatonic schizophrenia might explain the flat effect?

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2008-07-31 12:30pm

Considering where in Canada this was, my only reasonable explanation would be Windigo Spirit Possession....

you guys have any silver arrows and can we burn the guys heart afterwards?

cosmicalstorm · Post by **cosmicalstorm** » 2008-07-31 12:32pm

One second youre sleeping listening to some music, next second your head is cut off

Kanastrous · Post by **Kanastrous** » 2008-07-31 12:32pm

If only all it took, was a second...

Maxentius · Post by **Maxentius** » 2008-07-31 12:57pm

cosmicalstorm wrote:One second youre sleeping listening to some music, next second your head is cut off

Reread the article. It appears that the poor guy was stabbed in the chest, repeatedly, before his head was cut off. One can only hope that he had lost consciousness or was already dead by that point.

Chardok · Post by **Chardok** » 2008-07-31 01:27pm

Wow...in Canada? Weird...bet the passenger was American. I mean, that was the most shocking part of the article for me, not necessarily that the guy flipped out and killed someone. This is a sick world we're living in, people. sick world.

Superboy · Post by **Superboy** » 2008-07-31 02:11pm

I live in Winnipeg and my father was on the highway last night shortly after this happened. They were re-routing all the cars along a seperate road, but he said he could see dozens of cop cars. He said there must have been at least 25, plus ambulances and what apparently looked like a SWAT van.

On the news last night, they didn't release any details at all, only saying that there was "an incident".

That's beyond messed up. I wonder if the guy had any motivation or if he was just very very disturbed.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2008-07-31 02:24pm

To be honest, I'm surprised we don't hear more of these kinds of incidents from the prairie provinces. There is nothing to do out there at all, which is why people drink and do drugs to pass the time.

Look at the 2007 murder rates by city in Canada:
http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/080717/d080717b.htm

Code: Select all

City         Murder Rate
Winnipeg         3.6
Saskatoon        3.6
Edmonton         3.3
Calgary          3.1
Trois-Rivieres   2.7
Sudbury          2.5
Regina           2.5
Vancouver        2.4
Toronto          2.0
Saint John       2.0
Montreal         1.6
Hamilton         1.6
Ottawa           1.6
Thunder Bay      1.6
Halifax          1.8

Look at the top scores, with murder rates above 3.0 per 100,000: Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Calgary. ALL located in prairie provinces.

FSTargetDrone · Post by **FSTargetDrone** » 2008-07-31 02:24pm

Reread the article. It appears that the poor guy was stabbed in the chest, repeatedly, before his head was cut off. One can only hope that he had lost consciousness or was already dead by that point.

The article says "50 or 60" knife strikes to the chest, so if we assume half of those hit his heart, he may well have been dead before the worst of it.

Here is another article with some details about the assailant and victim:

Man stabbed, beheaded on Manitoba bus

'I don't think the guy knew him at all . . . the poor guy, he didn't see it coming'

Gabrielle Giroday and Ian Hitchen

Winnipeg Free Press and Brandon Sun

Thursday, July 31, 2008

BRANDON, Man. - Thirty-six passengers on a Greyhound bus watched in horror Wednesday night as a fellow passenger stabbed a man sleeping next to him, decapitated him and began waving around the man's severed head.

The bus made an emergency stop, and passengers fled in terror onto the darkening Trans-Canada Highway near Portage la Prairie, Man., while the bus's driver and a driver of a nearby truck shut the crazed man inside the bus with the victim. Passengers on the Winnipeg to Edmonton bus say they stood outside and watched through the window, horrified, as the man disfigured the victim's body.

RCMP have confirmed they are investigating a homicide, although investigators won't provide further details about how a young man was stabbed to death and then decapitated.

A suspect was taken into custody by the RCMP and arrested without incident, said Sgt. Brian Edmonds in a statement Thursday. He said the RCMP's serious crimes unit is investigating a homicide. The names of the victim and the suspect have not been released.

"He didn't do anything to provoke the guy. The guy just took a knife out and stabbed him, started stabbing him like crazy and cut his head off," said Garnet Caton, 36, a passenger.

"Some people were puking, some people were crying, other people were in shock . . . everybody was running, screaming off the bus."

Greyhound spokesman Eric Wesley, speaking from Texas, said drivers are trained to get help as soon as they can when incidents occur.

"This is very rare, unique occurrence. Bus transportation is one of the safest modes of transportation. This is highly unique that something like this happened," he said. "Our drivers are trained to provide the safest travel for all our passengers, and every time an incident occurs they know to pull the bus over and call 911."

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day, speaking in Quebec City, said the issue of safety on buses may need to be examined more closely once the legal process of this case is over.

"We're never closed to looking at how Canadians can be more safe and more secure," Day told reporters in Quebec Thursday. "This particular incident, as horrific as it is, is obviously extremely rare."

Witnesses described a nightmarish scene inside the bus.

Caton and others said once they escaped the bus, they prevented the attacker from getting off by threatening him with makeshift weapons - a hammer and a metal bar.

"We were telling him, 'Stay put, stay put, stay there, don't try to come out.' He tried to get the bus working and the bus driver disabled the bus somehow in the back, I'm not sure how he did it, and at that point, I think the police showed up," he said, adding officers rushed them away.

Caton described the man who attacked the passenger as about six feet tall, 200 pounds, with a bald head and wearing sunglasses. He seemed oblivious to others when the stabbing occurred, said Caton.

Caton said he was struck by how calm the man was. He just walked up to the front of the bus and dropped the head, Caton said.

Caton said the victim boarded in Edmonton, was Aboriginal in appearance, was wearing hip-hop clothing and appeared to be around 20 years of age.

"When we saw the head, we knew he was dead," he said. "I don't think the guy knew him at all. I think he was really crazy . . . the poor guy, he didn't see it coming."

Two yellow school buses were brought in to the closed-off stretch of highway for passengers to sit in while the standoff between officers and the man inside the bus proceeded for hours.

The passengers were later taken to Brandon, Man., to be interviewed by police and to stay overnight at a hotel there. Some will be resuming their trips later Thursday.

Crisis counsellors were also at the hotel to provide support to the passengers, and counsellors could be seen chatting with them outside the hotel as groups went out to local stores for snacks or to smoke cigarettes.

One small boy, who was with an adult man and woman, was given a plush teddy bear by a crisis health worker.

Another young man from Nova Scotia sat outside the Brandon hotel smoking around 3 a.m. Visibly shaken, he said RCMP had taken 36 witnesses in for questioning into a detachment approximately 100 kilometres east.

"I felt bad that all the young people and old people had to see that," he said.

The man, who did not want his name used, said the victim of the stabbing had been sleeping before the attack.

Other passengers said that the two men were sitting at the rear of the bus and the stabbing victim was listening to music through his headphones. The men were both sitting in the back of the bus, and the attack appeared to be unprovoked.

"The first thing I heard was something like a terrible type (of) yowl and that was from the guy who got stabbed," said an elderly woman on the bus, from Winnipeg.

The woman and her adult daughter said they were three or four rows in front of the suspect when the attack began.

"(My daughter said) 'Oh my God' and everybody else started screaming," she said. "They had terror in their eyes."

Passengers said there was a rush of people toward the front of the bus to get off.

Two other passengers on the bus, a 22-year-old man and 21-year-old woman from France, said they were heading to Winnipeg after visiting the woman's father in Whitehorse. The 22-year-old man said in French that he saw a man holding a long knife repeatedly stab another passenger. He and his girlfriend said they were shocked by the attack, and the isolation in the middle of the prairie when it occurred.

"There was nowhere to go," she said.

Wesley said counselling will be provided and monetary compensation will be determined on an individual basis.

"We are going to do whatever we need to provide the passengers with counselling or any other measures to make sure they're taken care of," he said Thursday.

He said there are security systems on the buses that enable drivers to contact the Greyhound operations office quickly.

He said officials from the company have been in talks with Transport Canada to review security measures on bus routes, but it could prove difficult.

"Well, the rural nature of our network doesn't allow us to have airport-style security - doesn't make it practical for us to do that. We're working with Transport Canada to review inner-city bus security," Wesley said. "We're working with them to make things as safe as possible."

With files from Canwest News Service

Kanastrous · Post by **Kanastrous** » 2008-07-31 02:32pm

I realize that a loaded bus is a terrible place for a fight, but it's mildly disappointing that none of the 36 people on the bus tag-teamed the killer.

SilverWingedSeraph · Post by **SilverWingedSeraph** » 2008-07-31 02:42pm

It's a worse place for a fight when the person is obviously armed and much more than willing to use his weapon to brutally murder someone for no reason. Attempts to stop him probably just would have resulted in more bodies in this instance, I think. The guy was likely a goner after the first few stabs, anyway, considering how big this knife evidently was.

This just... it makes me sick. What the hell could make a person do that?

Post by **Surlethe** » 2008-07-31 02:59pm

Kanastrous wrote:I realize that a loaded bus is a terrible place for a fight, but it's mildly disappointing that none of the 36 people on the bus tag-teamed the killer.

Are you kidding? The guy was not only armed and a cold-blooded killer, he was 6' and 200 lbs. Going up against him in a confined space like a bus would be, quite literally, suicide.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2008-07-31 03:03pm

SilverWingedSeraph wrote:What the hell could make a person do that?

Nobody knows at this point, but I have to admit that when I read that a bald guy kills a young dark-skinned man wearing hip-hop clothes, the words "racist skinhead psycho" come to mind. Of course, it might be something entirely different; the police will no doubt dig up everything they can.

The Duchess of Zeon · Post by **The Duchess of Zeon** » 2008-07-31 03:28pm

Yeah, if it was alongside the road and 36 people started throwing rocks at him all at once, that's one thing, but the only real way to stop this attack on the bus would be to intentionally crash the bus--and that might kill a lot more people.

I do have to wager it was some member of, say, the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang, but I'm not sure if they're up in Canada. Possibly he did it simply to earn cred with the gang when he's back in jail for committing the crime, if they do exist up there.

Kanastrous · Post by **Kanastrous** » 2008-07-31 04:35pm

Surlethe wrote:
Kanastrous wrote:I realize that a loaded bus is a terrible place for a fight, but it's mildly disappointing that none of the 36 people on the bus tag-teamed the killer.
Are you kidding? The guy was not only armed and a cold-blooded killer, he was 6' and 200 lbs. Going up against him in a confined space like a bus would be, quite literally, suicide.

I guess that's true.

My instinct would be to look for an opening to deliver a head shot, but likely no one on the bus was equipped to do that. And a moving target on a moving bus wouldn't make it easy, either.

The Duchess of Zeon · Post by **The Duchess of Zeon** » 2008-07-31 04:42pm

Dude, even if I was armed in those circumstances it would probably be impossible to safely get a shot off--I'd just get off the bus as quickly as possible and sight in on the doors in case he busts out, where you have 30 - 35ft between you and him and plenty of time for emptying the whole goddamned magazine, because guess what, he was probably hopped up on meth, and if he was he could have easily killed every single person on that bus, even if a half-dozen of them were heavily built men who went on him at once.

That, and I doubt any of those 200lbs on a 6ft frame was fat--that guy was probably massively built from 15 years of prison weightlifting.

Kanastrous · Post by **Kanastrous** » 2008-07-31 05:20pm

Maybe. Wasn't there, don't know if there might have even been a possibility of getting the shot lined up. It seems like the only effective response possible, even if the possibility would have been very limited.

Korvan · Post by **Korvan** » 2008-07-31 05:21pm

Gotta give the driver some credit for getting everyone else off, trapping the attacker on the bus and disabling the bus to boot.

FSTargetDrone · Post by **FSTargetDrone** » 2008-07-31 06:07pm

Concerning the idea that other passengers might have possibly intervened, remember that this happened at 9 PM. It wasn't that late, but people get tired on road trips. It could be that a lot of people were sleeping and then they are suddenly awoken to the sounds of a man screaming and he is being stabbed to death. People may have been disoriented at the very least.

FSTargetDrone · Post by **FSTargetDrone** » 2008-07-31 06:09pm

Surlethe wrote:Are you kidding? The guy was not only armed and a cold-blooded killer, he was 6' and 200 lbs. Going up against him in a confined space like a bus would be, quite literally, suicide.

He also "ran at" the other passengers. That could be even more intimidating, to say the least.

Post by **Alyrium Denryle** » 2008-07-31 06:39pm

Darth Wong wrote:
SilverWingedSeraph wrote:What the hell could make a person do that?
Nobody knows at this point, but I have to admit that when I read that a bald guy kills a young dark-skinned man wearing hip-hop clothes, the words "racist skinhead psycho" come to mind. Of course, it might be something entirely different; the police will no doubt dig up everything they can.

From the description it sounds like the guy was an untreated schizophrenic. Just speculation, but that seems more likely than racist skinhead... they are bigots, not necessarily idiots.

ArmorPierce · Post by **ArmorPierce** » 2008-07-31 06:44pm

FSTargetDrone wrote:
Surlethe wrote:Are you kidding? The guy was not only armed and a cold-blooded killer, he was 6' and 200 lbs. Going up against him in a confined space like a bus would be, quite literally, suicide.
He also "ran at" the other passengers. That could be even more intimidating, to say the least.

He ran at them with the head of the guy he just stabbed and sawed off. Kind of frightening in a crazy guy seeing a guy soaked in blood with a huge knife running toward your direction. According to the article some people were throwing up due to the sight of it.

Post by **Broomstick** » 2008-07-31 07:19pm

CaptainZoidberg wrote:And why would his facial expressions be flat? One would at least imagine that he's conditioned to be repulsed by a decapitated head, so he wouldn't be acting "like a robot".

I think it's a pretty safe bet he wasn't what any of us would describe as a "normal" state of mind.

As to what sort of human being this was - racist, schizophrenic, druggie - it's a bit early to speculate.

I'm guessing the driver disabled the bus by tripping a fuel shut-off valve. It would be quick and reliable.

As far as fighting back... if I'm on a bus and some 6 foot 200 lb psycho had just sawed the head off a fellow passenger and was now waving said head and knife around in a threatening manner I am getting the fuck OFF that bus as quickly as possible. If I had a child I might step between attacker and child but I think even then I'd be looking for a way for both of us to escape. Disable him? No way - he just killed somebody so there's no doubt there's a deadly threat and buses just don't have enough room to maneuver or for a group to rush him. No, odds are better for everyone but him if we all get the hell off the bus and regroup, or better yet, trap him inside so he can't hurt anyone else.