Kitty Genovese
In what has to be one of the more gruesome crimes I’ve ever heard of, a man on a bus full of people stabbed another man 50 or 60 times and then decapitated him. Then walks up the bus displaying the head. Wow. And:
Sgt Colwell said the “brave” behaviour of the passengers and driver probably prevented anyone else from being hurt.
So, let that seep in a minute. 50 or 60 times and then decapitated him. 37 passengers and a bus driver nearby. How long do you suppose it takes to stab someone 50 or 60 times and then decapitate them? And none of the 38 others intervened? Brave?
Now, it’s easy to play Monday morning quarterback but, Jumping Jesus on a Pogo Stick, I cannot imagine why no one tried to intervene.
Update: In comments, Paul tells us that it was reported the driver attempted to intervene. Good on him.
August 1st, 2008 at 11:02 am
As a biologist I’d like to add, while I have never cut into a human, my former job did have me doing work on dolphins which are aproximatly the same size as a person. One of the samples usally taken were of the heads, and being feild work this was done with just a standard 8″ utility knife. It can be done, but it can’t be done quickly unless you are very skilled, or very lucky (as you need to slide the blade between neck vertibre, then lever the spine apart with your wrist)
I’d say this grousome act took a little bit of time to complete.
August 1st, 2008 at 11:14 am
I took Greyhound once. Only once. If I even had to do it again, for any reason, laws and greyhound policy be damned… the Glock is going with me. Yeah… it’s that bad.
August 1st, 2008 at 11:17 am
“brave behavior”? “brave behavior”??!!
what they did was run away and bar the doors. there’s no bravery in that; Kitty Genovese of the Canadian prairie, this was. “brave”, like Monty Python’s Sir Robin.
note to our northern neighbors: running away is not brave. it might perhaps be prudent, but it is not brave.
August 1st, 2008 at 11:19 am
I read this on Fox and supposedly the driver attempted to do something but the perp threaten him with a largish knife. The victim was listening to his I-Pod and his seat mate lost it. According to witnesses it appear that the assailant gutted the victim before removing his head.
I used to have occasion to visit a grey hound terminal and it pretty well convinced me that I would never ride one.
August 1st, 2008 at 11:29 am
this is the same mentality that led to a bunch of passengers sitting by and doing nothing while men with pocket knives hijacked planes on the morning of 9/11… it was not until the passengers on the plane over PA were told by their family on the ground what had happened to the other planes that they decided to act…
i for one just cannot fathom the mentality that says “wait for the cops”… but then again i worked as a bouncer for a while so rushing toward a confrontation was the norm.
August 1st, 2008 at 11:33 am
OK, so you have some very obviously obsessed and emotionally distressed individual (dare I say “deranged”?), armed with a large knife, in the close quarters of of an interstate bus, rapidly plunging it into a fellow passenger, and you expect unarmed passengers to intervene? How, and with what? What self defense tools, and techniques, would the average bus passenger possess that would allow intervention with a reasonable expectation of not becoming the second pincushion?
August 1st, 2008 at 11:40 am
Pocket knife, tire iron, fire extinguisher, little piggies, sheer numbers, etc. There are a variety of methods available that do not involve locking the guy and his victim in the bus. Unarmed church-goers took down a shotgun wielding lunatic in TN last week.
As I said, easy to Monday morning quarterback. But I can’t imagine why only one person tried to intervene.
August 1st, 2008 at 12:00 pm
sheer numbers and body weight would be the best tools. as Uncle mentioned, that worked pretty well against a freakin’ shotgun recently. there were dozens of them, only one of him, and they all just ran away? who was this knife wielding maniac, the Hulk?
sure, big sharp knives are scary when somebody starts waving them around. i’d be scared too, nobody sensible wants to get cut. but these folks abandoned the victim to a gruesome death when they had an advantage — simple numbers — that could well have saved him; they ran like rabbits, and some Canuck cop tells them they were brave?!
no. what they did might have been necessary or prudent, and it’s possible that the victim could not have been saved no matter what they had done. but the only brave person on that bus was the driver, because he at least tried, even if he too backed off in the end.
August 1st, 2008 at 12:17 pm
But, but …
There must be some mistake.
I mean, Canadians are so much more civilized and polite than we are.
August 1st, 2008 at 12:21 pm
i dunno, we seem to have our own nutjobs here in the states.
August 1st, 2008 at 12:58 pm
I’m sure the knife was smuggled in from the U.S. You just know all those brave people are going to blame us.
August 1st, 2008 at 1:07 pm
Canada needs to enact some common sense knife laws.
August 1st, 2008 at 1:16 pm
I believe Canadastan has been trying to outlaw “Rambo knives” for some time. Of course the perp used a kitchen butcher knife supposedly.
As for attacking the guy, I can admit, that if I had a means of escape, and was not armed, I am not going after a guy with a butcher knife that seemingly knows how to use it.
Being trapped on an airborne airplane is one thing. Hauling ass out the front door of a bus and locking the bad guy in with the dead guy makes sense in this case. Of course if Canadian’s were allowed to carry concealed that may have been a different story.
August 1st, 2008 at 2:43 pm
In case you’re wondering:
This is what such a stabbing looks like:
http://mglv.blogspot.com/2008/01/this-is-what-stabbing-looks-like.html
August 1st, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Cannuks, got a love em. Still what can you expect when their border guards close down and leave (run away – run away) when told a criminal might (I said might) be coming to their crossing! Has happened more than once at the peace arch north of Seattle. But then these are the same folks that refused to supply their guards with armor vests because it sent “the wrong message”….la la la
August 1st, 2008 at 7:52 pm
“As for attacking the guy, I can admit, that if I had a means of escape, and was not armed, I am not going after a guy with a butcher knife that seemingly knows how to use it.”
I’m with Chris, If I’m unarmed I’m not running towards a guy who’s got a huge butcher knife.
August 1st, 2008 at 9:16 pm
Same here. In this one instance, the number of deaths can be kept to a minimum by this kind of action (fleeing).
Here’s the thing, even if you were one of a crowd of linebackers, the guy up front is going to get cut, possibly fatally. Very few people are going to stand up to do that.
The church shooting the other day is a completely different situation. A man with a shotgun is going to be able to harm more people than one with a knife. If there were people behind me, I’d put my life on the line to save others, sacrificing myself so that they could tackle the gunman. But in a situation like this, the chances of you saving the guy are low as it is.
Now, as cliché as it sounds, an armed person would have been able to attack without putting himself into harms way, and could have shot the attacker before the stabbings became fatal (after seeing that video linked above, I’m rather surprised that you can stab someone that many times and they survive.)
I don’t fault the others on the bus. It’s unnatural to run towards danger – it’s why we have to train our military, police, and first responders. As armed citizens, we can extend our reach with our weapons and effectively put us out of harms way in many situations, but these weren’t armed people.
August 2nd, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Self preservation comes in many forms. In this case, I have to side with Robb. They had the option to flee when it became apparent that the guy this sicko was attacking was already dead.
This situation doesn’t even remotely compare to United 91 or the church shooting in Tennessee. In those situations, fleeing is not an option. You have to put yourself directly into harm’s way to not only have a chance to save yourself, but to save others.
August 2nd, 2008 at 3:56 pm
I think the police chief was just praising the other passengers for not, you know, losing their head or anything.
Heh.
August 3rd, 2008 at 12:00 am
I used to take a greyhound to and from my hometown in NY and my base down in Maryland. It was easier than driving home after a 12-hour midnight shift.
Five hours of Who’s Who in Mental Illness.
August 3rd, 2008 at 12:05 am
I understand what everyone is saying about fleeing, but if it were your spouse or child at the pointy end of the knife attack, wouldn’t you hope for someone to have tried to save their life?
Anyone who fancies themself a warrior should be asking themself, what they would/should have done. If a big knife scares us, maybe we should prepare for that scenario too. You are never truly “unarmed”.
As Uncle says, what about a knife, a tire iron, or even a pencil to the ear? Maybe a backpack, anything to stop the slaughter.
I know bravado is easy at the end of the keyboard, but I have to keep wondering, what if it were my kid who was being slaughtered like a sheep? I would hope for someone with balls to help him out. I hope that I would have to balls to risk my life to help the victim, too.
August 3rd, 2008 at 1:42 am
Just re-read my post and want to make sure no one thinks I would fault any man or woman for fleeing. I fully understand it’s unnatural (and some would even say foolish) to run toward danger.
But in theory, I believe our reaction to violent evil should be rage and equivalent violence in defense of life.
With or without a firearm, we should be willing to risk our lives to save others. That is, if we rugged individualists are truly a different breed. Until citizens are willing to do that, predators will roam at will.
Since police aren’t always around when you need them most, if I were attacked by a knife wielding madman, I hope someone would be willing to risk their life and help me out. Likewise, I must be willing to do the same thing for someone else.
I know it would be the most difficult thing to do in the world, but the potential good is worth the grave risk. That is all.
August 5th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
“In case you’re wondering:
This is what such a stabbing looks like:”
Holy shit.
Here is what I don’t understand: the utter uselessness of the people taking their little swipes at that bastard while he was trying to kill that woman. A couple of perfunctory little kicks — no, no, no: you run up to him like he’s a teed football and blast him right on the nose with the front of an ankle. There had to have been an object near at hand with which to just cave in his fucking skull right on the spot.
I swear to Christ: I do not understand some people.