Police Kill Bus Hijacker After 320-Mile Chase

Convinced that Armageddon is near and distraught over losing touch with his family, a charter bus driver hijacked a Greyhound bus and its eight passengers in Phoenix early Thursday and led police on a 320-mile chase that ended with him shot to death just after reaching home.

A Colton police officer shot Reynaldo Andrade Gonzalez at 4:35 a.m. in the rear driveway of the house where he lived with his pregnant wife and three children. Gonzalez, 33, was unarmed but struggling with police in an attempt to get a weapon, said San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Sgt. Dennis Casey.

Gonzalez’s relatives called the shooting unjustified. “Our point of view is that he was executed,” said a brother of Gonzalez’s wife who refused to give his name. Referring to the black motorist beaten last year by Los Angeles police, he added: “If Rodney King had lived in Colton, he’d be dead right now.”

Gonzalez “was stressed out,” said the brother-in-law. “He thought the world was coming to an end. It did for him.”

During the four-hour pursuit across the Arizona and California desert, the commandeered bus struck a pickup truck, a car carrier and a California Highway Patrol squad car.

None of the bus passengers--including an infant and a French postal worker who speaks little English--were injured. Casey said that at one point Gonzalez told them “that they were all going to die”--not a threat, his family says, but a reference to the biblical “end of days.”

No one in the struck vehicles was hurt. Two Colton police officers at the scene of the shooting were hospitalized in fair condition.

Gonzalez worked part-time at a San Bernardino charter bus company because he did not like to be away from his family. But with business slow, the soft-spoken Gonzalez had not been called in to work for months. With a fourth child on the way, he was worried about money, and his religious fears seemed to grow as his financial situation worsened, the brother-in-law said.

As he pored over the Bible, especially the Book of Revelation, Gonzalez grew convinced that Armageddon was at hand, said another brother-in-law, Alfred Morales.

So on Monday, Gonzalez took his wife of 12 years and their three children to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, where for some reason “he thought they’d be safe,” Morales said.

On Tuesday, Gonzalez left the family in a motel room there. There is confusion over what happened next. He never returned to the motel, and some relatives speculated he either was returning to Colton alone or simply got lost in the Mexican border city. But he had taken the family’s car keys and his wife, Theresa Gonzalez, panicked. She called her family in Colton for a ride home.

Meantime, the brothers said, Gonzalez called another relative--his wife’s sister--from Phoenix, asking for a ride home himself. The brothers do not know how Gonzalez got to Arizona.

Relatives had already left home in Colton to get the wife and children, so they never learned that Gonzalez wanted them to stop and pick him up too, the family members said.

After the shooting, on the answering machine at Gonzalez’s home, the family found he had left a message: He intended to catch a cab to Colton.

Shortly after midnight Thursday, Phoenix police said, a man approached several cab drivers at the downtown bus terminal and inquired about transportation to Los Angeles. The cabbies told police the man was acting strangely. One told local television reporters that the would-be passenger said “Jesus wanted him (in California) right away and that the devil was chasing him.”

He was refused a ride.

About 12:20 a.m., Gonzalez boarded Greyhound bus 1647, scheduled to leave 15 minutes later for St. Louis. The keys were in the ignition, the engine was running and the driver was away.

He took the wheel and pulled away, headed west on Interstate 10.

Scattered throughout the bus were two women and an infant from Arizona, passengers from Missouri, Rhode Island and Minnesota, and the French man.

About 10 miles from the depot, an undercover narcotics officer for the Arizona Department of Public Safety noticed the bus was traveling without headlights. The officer, in an unmarked car, radioed for regular officers to stop the vehicle.

According to department Sgt. Rick Knight, two squad cars gave chase with flashing lights and sirens. The bus headlights stayed off and its speed increased, reaching 70 and, briefly, 85 m.p.h.

Inside, the French passenger, Jean Maurice Henry, had been wondering why the driver was not wearing a uniform.

A University of Redlands professor who acted as Henry’s interpreter said he told her that the driver was singing, Henry said, and that at one point, a young man went to the front to talk briefly with him.

Henry did not understand the exchange, but no one seemed frightened, the interpreter said.

Then the Frenchman noticed he was heading away from his Midwest destination. He spotted a sign that said: Los Angeles, 220 miles.

Arizona authorities and the California Highway Patrol, which took up the chase at the state line, tried placing tape with embedded metal spikes on the road moments before the bus arrived, in an attempt to slowly deflate its tires. But the maneuver failed.

The bus rolled across the desert, past Blythe and Indio and Banning, chased by patrol cars, police helicopters and television camera crews. The bus swerved across two lanes to knock a CHP squad car off the highway shoulder and into some dirt.

After reaching the urban area around San Bernardino, the bus reached Colton and took the Sperry Avenue exit, said CHP Officer Larry Olveda. It then headed west onto Valley Boulevard, north onto Rancho Drive and, finally, onto Stevenson Street.

Gonzalez stopped the bus in front of his house and got out.

KNBC cameraman Greg Bennett captured the scene on film: The driver, bearded and clad in blue jeans and a dark sweater, walked straight up the driveway while police handcuffed a blond young man, a passenger, who had also disembarked.

According to Casey, the San Bernardino County sheriff’s sergeant, Gonzalez was met toward the rear yard by an FBI agent armed with a shotgun. Gonzalez refused to stop on command, made “irrational comments” and finally grabbed the agent’s weapon, Casey said.

According to Casey, a single round was discharged, hitting Colton Police Sgt. Joseph McCann in the wrist. Colton Officer Charles Becerra came to McCann’s aid. Then a scuffle began over Becerra’s handgun. The officer’s right eye was injured during the struggle.

Colton Officer Mike Brisino, a four-year veteran, shot Gonzalez twice with a .22-caliber rifle, Casey said.

All three Colton officers have been placed on administrative leave, a routine procedure, Colton Lt. Randy Heusterberg said.

The Sheriff’s Department is investigating the shooting. Neither Casey nor Heusterberg would comment on whether the shooting was justified.

Times staff writer Judy Pasternak in Los Angeles contributed to this story.