I doubt it will ever happen, as Greyhound doesn’t give two shits about its customers, IMHO. They’re not going to throw millions into ripping up thousands od POS bus stations to be redesigned ala airport security layouts.
Dunno 'bout anyone else, but if a 200-pound skinhead with a creepy psychotic vibe sat down next to me, I’d switch seats.
A substantial majority of all Greyhound “stations” in western Canada are gas station/diners in small towns. It’s not that Greyhound doesn’t care. It’s simply completely impossible to implement.
…and the rest of the time?
::narrows eyes and looks warily at msmith537 ::
Doug, as a Canadian who watched and listened to the passengers on this bus on the news last night, I just find the bolded statement above incredibly offensive.
If you are in a confined space with a 6’ crazy man calmly stabbing a sleeping man with a “Rambo” knife for no reason, you probably wouldn’t be in a hurry to jump in there to try to stop him.
The bus driver, a passenger and a truck driver did go back on board the bus after everyone had gotten out. 3 burly men could do NOTHING but back off and bar the door to keep him confined in the bus until the cops came.
This was not your everyday stabbing, but a horrific nightmare for everyone on that bus. To infer they were cowards and allowed this guy to kill at his leisure is just wrong.
Krusty the Clown voice: Greyhound maintains the guy was decapitated before he got on the bus.
There was an Internet Tough Guy over on another board who was outraged that the other passegners didn’t rush the guy. Given the size of the adrenalized maniac, his Rambo knife, and the narrowness of the bus aisle, and damn glad they didn’t.
By the time anyone knew what the hell was going on, the victim was a goner, any group charge would have just resulted in more dead or seriously injured victims. If the rest of the passengers had been a football team, sure they might have subdued the guy eentually, but guaranteed we’d have several seriously injured or dead football players.
Number 1 rule or rescue: Don’t put yourself in jeopardy. You’re not helping if you have to be rescued too.
If the same thing had happened in a restaurant, yeah, someone probably would have smashed a chair over his head. But in a narrow bus aisle?
This.
I’m sure those folks are traumatized enough without the media and Internet Heroes telling them they’re partly responisble for the guy’s death.
Maybe someone told him, “If you wanna get a hat, get a head!”, or something…?
The Canadian approach to dealing with the media in this type of situation is much different from in the US. The courts frown on police and Crowns “trying the case in the media” and will back up their displeasure with sanctions, if they think the police or Crown have crossed the line from informing the public. As a result, police officers and Crowns are much more circumspect about what they will say about the facts, outside of court.
Plus, Dudley here is a constable, the lowest ranking member. His job in this situation is to secure a crime scene on one of Canada’s busiest highways, check to see if anyone else is at risk, call for EMS, direct traffic, etc. Media interviews rank pretty low on the list of things a constable does in that situation. The Mounties usually have a sergeant trained in media relations for major cases, who would probably have been en route at that stage.
Could inter-city bus coach lines in Canada tighten up their procedures to better protect pasengers? Yes.
(1) Don’t let obvious nuts on board. (Yes, I realize that in the beheadding matter there was no indication that the fellow was a nut, and i also realize that this would discriminate against obvious nuts who are in fact no dangerous). I argued at a coroners inquest and am presently working on a lawsuit concerning this sort of thing (the police put a nut on a bus with the knowledge of the driver – then while on the highway the nut grabbed the wheel and rolled the bus).
(2) Don’t let people with obvious weapons on board (e.g. guns and knives). This would take a bit of effort and expense – e.g. wanding by the driver at boarding – but reduce the chances of being murdered or serverely injured.
What a lot will come down to is the overall record of bus safety, which is excellent, verses the extra expense needed to save ony the occasional life. I’d rather the expense of safer proceduresbe paid rather than the cost in lives be paid, even if the deaths are extremely rare.
I take the opposite position. I think that extra security measures will add inconvenience and harrasment without increasing safety.
I do not think any reasonable security measures would have prevented the bus decapitator. By all accounts, this fellow appeared totally normal. He got on the bus calmly and made his way to a seat without fuss. No-one is saying that he obviously looked disturbed or psychotic - quite the contrary.
He stabbed the unfortunate victim to death with a knife. No-one mentioned in the media described seeing this knife before. Searching the bags of each and every passenger on the bus for knives isn’t really practical - and moreover, carrying knives under a certain size in your luggage isn’t illegal.
I would much rather put up with the danger of the occasionally unforeseeable lunatic than put in place stifling security measures to prevent said lunatic - which probably would not work anyway.
The real place to create change is not by attempting to make every bus secure, but by improving the sorry state of the mental health instutions and laws in this country. I find it hard to believe that Mr. Bus Decapitator does not have a history of mental illness and signs that should have been acted on before.
Ah, but if everyone on that bus had been carrying their own cartoonishly large knife, they could easily have decapitated the psycho before he had the chance to get off a second stab. If only more law-abiding Canadian citizens routinely carried kukris on the bus, this psycho would probably have never dared to go insane in the first place, and Canada would be much safer.
First I heard about the murder and was creeped out. Then I read about the guy taunting cops with the head, and I was revolted. Now there are rumors of possible cannibalization… blerghhhh. Truly horrific. Good on the trucker who stopped and handed out makeshift weapons to the disembarked passengers.
What? Eeeeeww.
This story just keeps getting worse. :eek:
It sounds like the guy had every intention of killing someone on that bus and didn’t just flip out.
Anyway, I am curious what Canadian justice will do to him. Will he get off on an insanity defense or get sent to an asylum for the rest of his life? Or will be be sentenced to death by being savaged by beavers?
Of course this happened because I am taking a bus trip at the end of the month. 
I know, it is just so hard to choose which blade is just right for both the occasion and the ensemble. Like, the claymore with our family crest would be tough to use in the confined space of the bus, but when you carry it around downtown, you get treated with far more respect than my Swiss Army knife. At least that’s been my experience.
So hard to accessorize these days!
It’s like something snapped and the guy’s mind plummeted to some savage, subhuman primitive state. I suspect the “cannibalism” wasn’t about devouring as much as “more destruction” in (literally) a tooth and nail, animal kind of way. From the witness accounts of the way he kept cutting and tearing at the guy, it was like the victim “wasn’t dead enough”.
You may have the bus to yourself. I can’t imagine tickets sales will be up for a bit.
Ugh - this bus stopped to pick up passengers less than 5 minutes from my apartment.
Victim and batshit asshole killer have been identified.
That hadn’t even occurred to me. I didn’t really get why Slithy was even commenting on this - of course the RCMP didn’t say much; how could they, this early?
I’m with you,Malthus, at being pissed at a system that has no room for guys like this in mental healthcare facilities.
+1
My only change would be to add the word ‘unnecessary’ before jeopardy. Going into a burning building is putting yourself in jeopardy. Doing that without bunker gear is unnecessary jeopardy.
Once the victim was gone, and several stabs from a large hunting knife would do for anyone quickly, there’s no more point to doing more than just evacuating the bus. This isn’t like the Colin Fergusson attack where the people on the train just sat there and let the guy reload*. There were no more victims to protect by that point. And as horrific as the mutilations to the body are - that alone is not enough for me to justify having unarmed persons charging someone who has already used their knife to kill.
BTW, it’s worth noting: Greyhound Canada was at one point (and I believe still is) part of the Trailways network of bus companies.
*This isn’t meant to be a true condemnation of the victims or spectators of the LIRR shooting - just a recognition that there was a lost opportunity, while the victims/spectators were keeping down and hoping the madness was over. I doubt I’d have done anything different, no matter how easy it is to Monday Morning Quarterback.