Welcome Aboard Bus 1227

• Many friends feigned horror and mocked my decision to ride the Greyhound bus between Winnipeg and Regina. On that route last summer a crazed man stabbed, beheaded and cannibalized a fellow passenger. Recently back in the headlines as the crazed man was declared still-crazy, the horrible incident was understandably at the forefront of many people’s minds. However, having already had my “bad bus experience” back in California when the lady next to me had a cardiac arrest, I figured I had a better chance of winning the lottery than having another bad-bus experience. Just shows you how wrong and unlucky a person can be!

• The guy was on the bus when I boarded Greyhound bus 1227; seat #4 in the front row, beside the window and across the aisle from the driver. A woman was with him and they were using sign language. Then she got off the bus. I sat immediately behind #4. An unsuspecting passenger got on the bus and innocently sat in seat #3.

• The bus eased out onto Winnipeg’s westbound Portage Avenue, the main drag that runs flat and straight with barely a curve in the 1,200 km road between The ‘Peg and Calgary.

• Within blocks, the driver announced a side trip to the airport to pick up more passengers. I think that’s when the guy in seat #4 started acting crazy; ugly grunting noises, rocking back-and-forth and up-and-down in his seat, and slapping his own face. Slap! Slap! Slap! One side and then the other, each slap violently harder and shockingly louder.

• Glancing at the commotion over his shoulder, the driver called out for the guy to sit down. Although they were strangers, seat #3 had figured out that, in addition to being incredibly enraged and acting crazy, seat #4 was deaf and mute. He tried conveying the “sit down” message with gestures.

• In a nanosecond, I decided I would get off the bus at the airport if the crazy guy remained on board. (With hindsight, I know it sounds cruel to refer to the guy as “crazy” but, in the heat of the situation, with just-refreshed memories of what-can-happen, the word “crazy” is actually quite minimalist.)

• Things escalated quickly. Pulling a notebook and pencil from his pocket, crazy guy wrote the word “Brandon” and kept jabbing his finger at the page. Although seat #3 wrote that he was trying to help, crazy guy’s anger just got even worse. His face, already scarlet-cheeked from the self-slapping, reddened all over as the veins popped out on his forehead. Standing up and struggling to get past seat #3, the grunting became a howling sound. He started lunging forcefully toward the driver, restrained only by seat #3.

• I’ll be honest - I was really, really, really scared and felt like I would cry. It seemed so unreal. Could this really be happening? I had already ducked across the aisle, lest crazy guy turn and punch me in the face. Other passengers had also moved further away. I pulled out my cell phone, ready to dial 911. Later, other passengers told me they were ready to do the same thing as they considered jumping out the bus windows because crazy guy was between them and the door. I could hear the driver on the phone with the depot saying that he had a “situation with a passenger and was turning back”.

• By then crazy guy was pushing even harder to get out of his seat and get at the driver. The guy in seat #3 held crazy guy back and said really loudly, “I might have to hit this man to protect myself or the driver or other passengers. I need people to witness that if I hit him I’m doing it in self defence or to protect someone else.”

• The bus pulled into the terminal. I don’t even remember how it got there. I was just too focused on what was happening before my very eyes and too darn scared. When the door swung open two burly security guards got on board. Crazy guy clearly did not want to get off the bus. When he was finally removed there was further commotion on the platform. The bus driver calmly re-boarded the bus, shut the door and with a bus full of traumatized passengers, once again headed westbound on Portage Avenue.

• There was a 10-minute stop at Portage la Prairie. Everyone got off the bus and everyone was still quite upset, including me. It was a very troublesome event. I think the reason people held off dialing 911 was because the situation was just so unbelievable and everyone was just hoping it would stop and everyone could picture what might happen if crazy guy jumped on the driver or if the police came. It was easy to picture a very, very bad ending; possibly with crazy guy being shot dead right before our very eyes.

• The amazingly calm hero/bus driver asked seat #3 and me to write reports at Brandon to put in his “daily report envelope”. He said we can expect Greyhound to contact us because they are sure to do an investigation. I hope they do. In any event I am going to write and compliment the heroic driver on handling the situation so well by diffusing an event that could have got Greyhound a world of publicity so bad that they wouldn’t be able to give-away their bus tickets.

• After Brandon, I sat with the guy from seat #3 until he got off in Moosomin, Saskatchewan. Equal to the driver in heroism, he was not afraid to take action to protect himself, the driver and everyone else. I don’t even like to think about what might have happened if he hadn’t restrained crazy guy from leaping onto the driver. I thanked him repeatedly.

• Although crazy guy scared me so badly and was so threatening and violent, I felt compassion for him because he couldn’t communicate and seemed so freaked out. My guess is that, despite his “special needs”, he had probably travelled solo on the bus between Winnipeg and Brandon before but had never been on a bus that deviated from the straight-arrow Portage Avenue route. What must he have thought was happening? I’ve gone over and over this event in my mind and although I feel incredibly sorry for him (presuming my assessment of the situation is accurate), it doesn’t change the fact that he went into a rage, terrorized people and could have hurt or caused them to be injured (or worse) and he could have been shot dead.

• Although the situation ended peacefully, I think everyone was pretty traumatized and I know my will remember my fear for a long time to come.