Bus Hijacker Dies After Passengers Attack

On a bus barreling down a South Carolina highway in the middle of the night, a passenger lumbered up the aisle, put a knife to the driver’s throat and shouted: “I’m not playing!”

He took the wheel for an hour early Saturday, ranting about the movie “Speed” and threatening to drive off a bridge, police said.

But the calm bus driver forced the vehicle to a stop, and he and some of his 24 other passengers jumped the hijacker. The knife-wielding man wound up dead, though police wouldn’t say how he died; he was not shot or stabbed.

When firefighters pried open the door of the bus on a concrete median on Interstate 77 in Charlotte, “the bad guy fell out and he was DOA,” said Capt. J.C. Felder of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg police.

No passengers were injured, although five who complained of chest pains were taken to hospitals.

The hijacking suspect’s name was not disclosed. He was described as a bearded man in his 20s or 30s.

It started about 1:30 a.m. after the bus left Columbia, S.C. The hijacker had been drinking and had two bottles of wine in his backpack.

“He was talking out of his head the entire time. He said he was going to ‘stab them before they stab me,’ “‘ said passenger Sherry Knight of Charleston, S.C. Knight said she and the hijacker had boarded a bus in North Charleston and transferred to the Charlotte-bound bus in Columbia.

The hijacker ordered the passengers to the back as he sped north, swerving.

Bus driver H. Gene Sparks, who stayed in a seat near the front of the bus, kept everyone calm.

As the bus neared Charlotte, Sparks noticed that the hijacker “started to talk more erratic than he had been and acted more erratic,” said Rick Vanhoy, Greyhound’s area manager in Charlotte.

Sparks then pulled the emergency brake and both he and the hijacker tumbled into the stairwell, where they fought. Gary Sutton of Columbia, S.C., a Greyhound driver who was riding the bus to start a trip from Charlotte, grabbed the wheel and stopped the bus against the median, Vanhoy said.

Then some of the passengers “took it upon themselves to overtake the overtaker,” and went to Sparks’ aid, Felder said.

Some of the other passengers climbed out windows and flagged down passing motorists. “I tried to be cool and calm under the circumstances,” Sparks said later at the downtown Greyhound terminal.