But passenger Garnet Caton said the victim, who appeared to be about 19, was sleeping with headphones on when his seat mate suddenly began stabbing him as the bus traveled a desolate stretch of the TransCanada Highway, a dozen miles from Portage La Prairie. Caton, sitting just one seat in front of the two men, said he heard no exchanges between them prior to the violence.
“We heard this bloodcurdling scream and turned around, and the guy was standing up, stabbing this guy repeatedly,” Caton said from a hotel in Brandon, Manitoba, where he and other horrified passengers were taken…
He said the suspect had the victim on the floor of the bus and “was cutting his head off” with a large hunting knife.
The Canadians, in a moment of understatement said this incident was not common. Hmm. Good to know, IF TRUE!
We get you there, chop, chop!
#30 Not just the Chinese. The Lower Mainland has the world’s largest Sikh community outside of India.
#27 is correct. No one can predict or control their response to something like this. The shock, horror and panic would be overwhelming. #28, please understand that Batman is a fictional character. You, #27 and I are just ordinary people.
What happened here is probably due to schizophrenia, a truly terrible disease that I hope medical science will soon be able to do something about.
#32, Jim,
Cow-Paddy doesn’t think like a normal or rational person would. He doesn’t understand that the assailant had a large knife and this would take place in the confined space of a bus aisle. That is OK, because Cow-Paddy carries his “piece” with him for just that sort of emergency.
“Fear only creates more fear”
Well I think that people are reading posts – not for entertainment or making jokes but in search for an explanation to rest themselves more at ease. For example, questions of race: (i.e. was this person non-White so I could sleep better at night) ..and others who just want anwers.
I do agree with #21 who basically told those who say silly comments to get real and address the real issue.
The real issue I beleive is: when will we take our community back?
When will we stop these guys on busses or in Subways stations (no not the food subway you guys have in the prairies ;))
This bus incident describes society as a whole in most cases where crimes occur. 1 bad person out of 37, or 2.7% of population. And it is our jobs as citizens (the 97.3% of us) to control these people. Not only the police. We call the police but we need to protect our community and take it back first because we are the ones living it, we are the 97.3 %.
You’re not going to tell me 37 people could not stop one man. ..and by the way ..I think they should consider training bus drivers, just like flight attendants are trained to react in situations of chaos. They should have more tools and abilities to react in these situations (a stun gun, rubber bullet gun etc…) Why not? They are responsible for the lives of their passengers.
What happened here is what happens when we allow the 2.7% of bad apples to take over our society. This is what happens when we allow fear to take over. We fear for our lives more than that of our community (or society) which only creates more fear, therein increasing the gravity of the situation, thus leading to our own demise as a community if we dont stand up in these situations.
So I say that we should take back control of our society because there will always be a 2.7% of population of bad apples or grapes and there always has been, its just a matter of taking back our community and controlling these bad apples.
#34: “You’re not going to tell me 37 people could not stop one man.”
There are a number of problems with the whole “they should have stopped him!” fantasy.
First of all, the victim was likely already mortally wounded before the bus even stopped. Maybe they could have done something to prevent the beheading, but at what risk? Losing more lives?
Second, any action against the killer would have taken place in a confined space. Have you been on a bus? There’s barely enough room for one person to move down the aisle, never mind 37. That would mean a one vs. one attack against an armed man, having 30 other passengers behind you would have provided no advantage. Unless you’re a martial arts expert the odds are against you winning that sort of confrontation.
The majority of people would have reacted the same way the passengers of the bus did, they did what they could. I’m glad they were able to trap the killer in the bus until the police arrived.
As I understand it, the fella in the seat in front alerted the bus driver to stop, and yelled at everyone to get off the bus, probably saving several lives. After everyone else was off, and they saw the killer walking down the aisle with the head, they trapped him on the bus. A truck driver stopped and armed them with impromptu weapons in case the killer managed to break out. I don’t see that as doing nothing. In my job, I am trained to react in emergency situations to alert those around me first. I believe those on the bus did what they could.
Ya, after some thought I’m leaning towards the getting out idea because apparently they were sleeping when it happened so he was most likely already dead. But in an emergency situation we have to be the police I beleive (when the police are not yet on scene).
It was brave for all the people and in that scenario I think it was right on second thought. But KJones, you should note that you’re comment is coming from the view of a person filled with fear. I agree with the theory of don’t risk another life for one (all the way). But criminals are getting more intelligent and are feeding off of this fear. And my friend I beleive that fear only creates more fear. So if people never do anything to try to stop attackers on buses they will not stop to think that the community might stop them.
So I think its not a fanstasy but a community oriented country that is losing its community slowly. And so in light of this I htink the guy who was relating globalisation and the cost of fruits is not so far off in a philisophical spectacle. The argument I make is that the more we don’t try to stop incidents in public the more deadly and dangerous they will become. And eventually one day we could be the victim on any bus. And I live in Montreal and I’ve seen several attacks on innocent victims getting robbed. And what strikes me the most is that the robbers are not always so fearful of skilled but they know that people fear too much for their lives to react (naturally in a way) but this fear also undermines our own saftey.