This case is much like the Sergio Aguiar case. A crowd of people decided to save their own hides rather than help a person described as “just a kid” when a 40-year-old maniac began hacking away at the youngster on a bus headed to Winnepeg. Tell me what’s wrong with this picture:
Passengers said the man repeatedly stabbed his seat-mate before beheading him and carrying the victim’s head around the bus.
RCMP Staff Sgt. Steve Colwell wouldn’t confirm those details, but did say a 40-year-old suspect was in RCMP custody and police were planning to interview him.
No charges were immediately laid.
Colwell said the behaviour of the passengers and driver probably prevented anyone else from being hurt.
“It’s not something that happens regularly on a bus,” he said. “You’re sitting there enjoying your trip and then all of a sudden somebody gets stabbed. I imagine it would be pretty traumatic … the way they acted was extraordinary.”
Colwell said they “were very brave. They reacted swiftly, calmly in exiting the bus and as a result nobody else was injured.”
Yes, the passengers bravely tucked their tails between their legs and left an as of yet unidentified child (I assume the victim’s a child since the authorities are being coy about his age and identity) to die knowing that no other person around him cared enough to attempt to save him.
The driver is duty bound to rescue the rest of the passengers and he did return with a heroic trucker, alas too late. But their were at least 37 other passengers on the bus, some strapping young men like Garnet Canton who gave this interview detailing his “heroics” to CBC News:
Garnet Caton, who was sitting in the seat in front of the victim, said he saw the attacker stab his seatmate, a young man sleeping with his headphones on.
Caton said he heard a “blood-curdling scream” and turned around to see the attacker holding a large “Rambo” hunting knife above the victim, “continually stabbing him in the chest area.”
“He must have stabbed him 50 times or 60 times,” said Caton.
Thank goodness Canton’s quick thinking allowed him to be inches from a murder and escape unscathed to give interviews. At least he didn’t do anything rash like try to stop the man by grabbing his arm between stabs. Of course his actions were positively herculean compared to fellow Canadian Cody Olmstead:
Passenger Cody Olmstead, 21, told CBC News he had smoked a cigarette earlier in the trip with the victim, whom he described as a man in his late teens or early 20s. The victim got on the bus in Edmonton, he said.
“I never took the time to know him, but he seemed to be OK, right, just a kid,” said Olmstead, a Nova Scotia man who had been taking the bus from Alberta to Montreal.
[…]
“Like, just everywhere, arms, legs, neck, chest, guts, wherever he could swing it, he got it,” said Olmstead.
“It looked kind of like a scuffle or an argument, you know, and then somebody’s, like, ‘Knife! Knife! Run!’ so I was running up the alleyway, slapping people telling them to get going, move, get off the bus. I got pushed over, some lady got pushed over, I was just making sure everybody was OK, and we all got off the bus,” said Olmstead
As panicked passengers fled the bus, “the attacker was over top of the victim … continually cutting him. I think the victim was gone at that point,” Caton said.
Or so he hopes, as it will keep him sleeping well at night. Disgusting.
If you have the stomach read the reports and remember this the next time you think about traveling up north. You are definitely on your own up there.
h/t NT.A.
Update: The killer was 40-year-old Vince Weiguang Li who cannibalized his victim. He ate parts of 22-year-old Tim McClean, jr. N.T.A. has video of the witness interviews.
As much as I agree with you that the people on the bus might have been able to help the guy more, there is much to disagree. I feel you’re quick to pass judgment on everyone but how heroic would you have been in the same situation. It is easy for anyone, including myself, to say that they DEFINITELY would have helped. But nobody knows exactly what they would have done in that situation.
In the world we live in today with crazy psychos and schizo’s it’s not hard to see why most people’s first reaction is self preservation. I’d like to see how big your pair is after you watch a 22 year old kid get beheaded as the attacker brings his head to the front of the bus to show the onlookers then goes on to eat some of the boy’s flesh. That was also in another report. I’d have to guess that would shrink em a little, cause i’d be lying if I said that wouldn’t freak me the hell out too. It’d just be interesting to see what your reaction would be if placed in the same scenario. Maybe you’d run to the computer?
Sorry Cory but I wouldn’t have watched it, nor would anyone I know including my wife who has, like me, gotten involved when she’s seen a crime going on. But you don’t have to believe I would or wouldn’t, what you have to do is pretend it was you getting stabbed while strapping young men were inches away, pretend the last thing you saw in your life was a busload of people leaving you to die, then tell me how you wouldn’t judge them.
Pretend it was your son, or wife, and people watched them die without helping. Would you not judge them as cowards?
Or let’s imagine that you were literally arms reach from a doughy old man stabbing some kid but did nothing. Wouldn’t the fact that you hadn’t grabbed the man’s arms and helped that kid haunt you forever? Wouldn’t you be forced to admit the reason you did nothing was pure, unadulterated cowardice?
Don’t get me wrong, in this case we’re talking about people from a country that teaches people to rely heavily on the state for everything, including defense of their person, so I would blame the system that teaches them to be unable to help others first, them second. But Tim McLean watched people leave him to be butchered by a cannibal who may have started eating him before he died. That’s what the last moments of his life were. Doesn’t someone need to speak out for him?
I totally agree with you, these people should have done somthing. I can’t say for SURE I would have done somthing. However, I feel responsible to help my fellow man in such situations and I have been in life or death situations in the military. This is what seperates the men from the Boys. Unfortunately, you can’t attribute Age to a variable descreption of maturity anymore.
It seems as when the going gets tough, everyone looks through the passengers eyes instead of the victims. But when its a gay guy, or a murderer, the liberals, and some republicans, look through theirs. What the F**K is wrong with these people. I think common sense is a thing of the past. Common sense is anything that makes YOU feel better about YOU, even if its immoral.
Glad to see there are still some real guys out their though, not breast fed nipple mongers of the American bosom. Time to get real people. (Doubt thats going to happen though).
WELL ,WHAT CAN I SAY TO EVEN DESCRIBE MY REVULSION.BUT IT IS NO WONDER.CANADIANS GAVE UP THEIR RIGHT AND WILL TO SELF DEFENSE.THEY ALLOWED THEM SELVES TO BE DISARMED AND MENTALLY CASTRATED.HAD THIS HAPPENED IN MANY U.S. VENUES WHERE WE STILL CAN OWN AND CARRY WEAPONS,THIS WHACK JOB WOULD HAVE POSSIBLY GOT THREE OR FOUR IN THE HEAD FROM A CONCERNED CITIZEN..AS we in the U.S.. finally become settled in the reality that we live in dangerous times and that the right to defend yourself is paramount,it seems that our northern cousins as well as our brit and australian relatives have been socialized right out of their rights and cojones.It has not stopped those with evil or lunatic intent one bit from going about their business,as they are not constrained by civil ,social,or even mental mores.WAKE UP chumps ,if you don’t look out for you ,your loved ones,or even the rest of society,you are all in the toilet.You have truly become a nation to be scorned…I will pray for that poor kid.I won’t pray for the nut who killed him,your government will see to it that he gets the best of care….SHAME ON YOU CANDIANS.
I am a 50 year old woman and I guarantee I would not sit there and do nothing. Truthfully I would probably say what the fuck are you doing and yeah I would probably try to grab the knife and then what? There would be two dead people on the bus. I believe that there were 38 other people that could have overpowered the killer. Why didn’t they? I could never say why no one tried to do anything. I know that of all the passengers on the bus only one or two were on the documentary. Why not the others? I remember when it happened and I only heard that the victims head was removed. I did not know until I recently watched the documentary and that was when I discovered that the eating of body parts was involved. How did it get that far? I know that when I saw the young man in the documentary I was shocked when he repeatedly said “I knew something was up”. He then describes the killer’s odd behavior. But he ran too. I think you hit the nail on the head when you said “the passengers reactions probably saved others from getting hurt”. Wow, I would rather have several injured passengers and one living Tim McClean. The fact that the greyhound bus that Tim travelled on is still on the roads boils my blood. If I were his mother I would soak that thing with gasoline and torch it. Are you kidding me? Let us just pore salt into a wound. Her child was murdered while everyone fled the scene and then sat outside the bus and watched the rest of the tragedy unfold. Unbelievable! I would not be able to live with myself if I sat by and did nothing.
A few months ago in Munich, Germany a 40 year old man saw two 20 somethings picking on a young boy at a train station. The man intervened and was beat to death by the two while onlookers did nothing but watch. This seems to be the status quo; the times we live in. Gone are the days of our fathers, the greatest generation is passing away into history as ours and unassumingly the generations to come lay down their rights, their freedoms, and their arms to become members of the new enlightened society. I am appalled at this new society. I would much rather die on my feet, than live on my knees.
Mike, I only stumbled across this now. Although written long ago in 2008, you are an absolute moron! You know NOTHING about Canadians. They do not rely on Americans! They are happily spending their money in our country while we are in a deep recession caused by idiots like you! Read a book. You need the education.