Disturbed man terrorizes fellow passengers on Greyhound bus

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Passengers aboard a Greyhound bus on a desolate stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway west of Winnipeg were terrorized for an hour Tuesday night by the actions of a disturbed man shouting death threats, racial slurs and assaulting a woman before police met the bus and took the man to hospital.

For one passenger, it was eerily similar to a notorious incident that occurred eight years ago on a Greyhound bus at nearly the same spot on the Trans-Canada Highway.

“People were shouting ‘Where are the police!’ and ‘Put him off the bus!'” said one of the passengers who boarded the bus in Brandon Tuesday night. She lives in Winnipeg and commutes to work twice a week in Brandon. On Tuesday night, the weather was bad, so the mom with a young child at home decided to play it safe and take the bus.

“The roads were too terrible,” said the professional who agreed to talk to the Free Press on the condition of anonymity, expressing a concern for her safety if her name was published. She remembers the unspeakable tragedy involving a mentally ill man aboard a Greyhound bus near there eight years ago when a passenger was slain.

“I think about that every time I take that bus,” she said. “Not where I’m frightened — it’s generally a good experience. You meet all kinds of neat people.”

What bothers her now is what’s changed since July 2008 when Vince Li killed and dismembered Tim McLean on a Greyhound bus near Portage la Prairie. A judge later found Li was suffering hallucinations from untreated schizophrenia at the time of the unprovoked attack. She wonders what could have happened Tuesday if there hadn’t been a “bouncer” riding that night who restrained the troubled man — and how bad it could’ve ended if there had been a weapon.

Here’s how she described that unsettling journey:

She boarded the bus and headed for two empty seats near the back. She had hoped to do some reading and work during the trip to Winnipeg. Then, she noticed a large man in his 30s acting strangely.

“He was sitting on the floor of the bus at the back,” she said. “I thought ‘He’s a bit of a goof but hopefully harmless.” Then she heard him say “Someone’s going to get hurt.” She thought he was “under the influence” or having a mental breakdown but wasn’t alarmed by his behaviour. Until it got worse.

“We were pulling out of town and he’s starting to get loud and boisterous,” she said. “He kept saying ‘Serial killer’ and ‘Someone’s going to die,'” she said. Other passengers who got on the bus earlier said he’d been “causing problems” since Edmonton, she said. “Some people sitting around him were telling him to shut up.”

One passenger, though, took charge and tried to calm the fellow down, she said.

“He was saying in a firm, supportive tone ‘Just look forward’ and ‘Just breathe’. He seemed to know how to handle the situation.”

‘Hero of the bus’

She presumed the man in his 40s with a muscular build and a Mohawk haircut was a mental health support worker. She heard later that he is a nightclub bouncer somewhere in Canada and not a mental health worker. He got the troubled passenger to sit next to the window beside him.

“He tried to calm him down but he kept fighting with people in the back of the bus and shouting loud things,” she said.

“That guy was the hero of the bus,” she said of the burly man trying to calm the troubled fellow. “He kept the rest of us protected and protected the man from people who were getting really angry.”

She said the passenger causing the ruckus appeared to be having a very serious episode of mental illness and could potentially put people in harm’s way.

A few passengers went to the front of the bus to alert the driver. The bus driver soon announced that RCMP had been contacted and would meet the bus in MacGregor up ahead.

“We all breathed a sigh of relief,” she said.

The passengers thought it would soon be over — but the disturbing situation lasted another hour.

‘He threatened to kill us all’

During that hour between Brandon and MacGregor, tensions on the bus continued to rise, said the Winnipeg woman.

“We ended up with him shouting and getting progressively more agitated. He threatened to kill us all. He was shouting ‘serial killer’ and that he was god. He continued to get more agitated as we went,” she said.

When he headed toward the front of the bus, the “bouncer” followed him.

“He was so calm and so gentle with this man. That put me at ease. I thought ‘Oh good, we have someone who’s professional’. That was very comforting.”

That calmness didn’t last. The troubled passenger threatened two very young children sitting with their mom at the front of the bus.

“He said ‘I’m going to slit their throats,'” she recalled.

“It was all really terrible and we were all upset but that was particularly frightening,” she said. “Both kids were sleepy and quiet and their mom was awesome and so attentive and cuddly with them.”

The man was unarmed, but threatening to slit the throats of little kids “ramped up” many of the passengers who’d been annoyed with him since the bus left Edmonton, she said.

Then his disturbing behaviour took another turn.

“As we were driving, he was picking on an African-Canadian man and calling him the most racist names you could imagine and saying he was going to ‘get’ him. That was awful.” The passengers were outraged, she said.

“Everyone began shouting him down. No one was having any of that.”

She said the bus finally pulled into MacGregor but police hadn’t yet arrived. They stopped at a safe location off the highway on a residential street, the troubled passenger was put off the bus and the driver closed the door.

Once the man was ejected from the bus, passengers breathed another sigh of relief but not for long, she said. They watched as the man tried to break into a home nearby.

“He was pulling on the storm door,” she said. Then, a woman who had been riding the bus with the mentally ill man ran off the bus and tried to pull him away from the door.

“Then he starts beating her up.” That prompted another man at the back of the bus to exit the coach and go after the troubled passenger who was assaulting her.

“He pushed the guy off her… He went down with that push and stayed down after that.”

The RCMP arrived and put the man in the cruiser and spoke with the bus driver. An officer boarded the bus and asked what happened. No one would tell them anything except the commuter from Winnipeg and the bouncer, she said.

“I stressed to the officer that (the troubled passenger) really needed some kind of psychiatric help,” she said. “I wanted to make that very clear. I didn’t want him to end up in a jail cell and not getting help.”

She said the police left with the troubled man and his female companion. The Greyhound bus driver handed out incident reports to the passengers. She filled hers out and included her contact information but, as of late Thursday afternoon, she said she hadn’t been contacted by the bus company.

“It’s very upsetting,” she said. “I’m surprised no one has contacted me from Greyhound. I don’t know if this is so common, it’s just an ordinary thing.”

Protocols followed: Greyhound

Greyhound said Thursday night that the company will be contacting her.

“We will be reaching out to customers who were on the bus during this incident,” said Greyhound spokeswoman Lanesha Gipson in Dallas. “And our drivers and other employees are always offered assistance through our Employee Assistance Program.”

Gipson said company protocols were followed in this case.

“If this type of behaviour occurs on board the bus, the driver will pull over in a safe location, remove the customer from the bus and contact the local authorities, as was the case in the recent incident that occurred,”

“The driver called Greyhound dispatch as well as the RCMP in Carberry immediately upon the customer becoming unruly,” Gipson said. “However, there were no RCMPs in Carberry and the driver was told an RCMP would meet the bus in MacGregor to remove the customer.

“The customer was detained and no longer a serious threat to other customers on board while they traveled to MacGregor. Once in MacGregor, he was removed from the bus and the RCMP apprehended the customer,” she said.

“The normal protocol for an unruly customer on board is for the driver to remove the customer at the soonest and safest opportunity, and call the local authorities and dispatch for assistance,” she said. “During inclement weather, if a bus is on the road in a remote location, a driver can still access the local authorities and dispatch who always immediately respond,” she said.

Greyhound, Gipson said, has a “zero tolerance policy” regarding aggressive behaviour. “Because the safety and security of our customers is the cornerstone of our business, we enforce a zero tolerance policy with respect to unruly or aggressive behaviour,” she said.

Man taken to hospital

RCMP spokeswoman Tara Seel said Thursday afternoon that officers were dispatched to a report of a disruptive person on a Greyhound bus near MacGregor, about 125 kilometres west of Winnipeg at about 9 p.m. Tuesday.

There were no weapons involved and no injuries, she said. The man was removed from the bus without incident and taken to hospital, she said.

The Canadian Mental Health Association is hoping the Greyhound incident on Tuesday won’t further stigmatize people who experience mental illness and may motivate people who care to learn “mental health first aid.”

“We want to encourage everybody to take mental health first aid, to understand and know how to be of assistance” said Marion Cooper, executive director of the association in Winnipeg. It’s a way to prevent the helpless, scared and frustrated feelings of not knowing what to do when someone is in significant mental health distress, she said.

Knowing how to de-escalate a situation and offer practical support and assistance helps bystanders and the person in distress, she said. It also decreases the stigma of mental illness when people have a better understanding of how to respond to it, she said.

And it’s not just members of the public who need to learn mental health first aid, she said.

“We really need our police forces to have all the training so they can respond effectively,” said Cooper. Rather than being taken to jail, people experiencing mental illness should get help from a hospital and other care providers, she said.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca