I know this is stale at this point, but this morning a bus driver was shot downtown.
Just after 8:45 this morning, Seattle police began receiving a flood of reports that a man had shot a Metro bus driver on the Route # 27 bus near 3rd Avenue and Seneca Street.
The male suspect reportedly stayed on the bus for a short time after the shooting, before he fled on foot through downtown.
Officers then spotted the suspect near 2nd Avenue and Seneca, where he opened fire on officers and ran to a second bus.
When the suspect tried to get on a second bus, the driver and some of the passengers began evacuating the bus and the suspect got on board.
Officers confronted the suspect on the second bus and shot the suspect.
[…]
The 67-year-old Metro driver’s injuries do not appear to be life-threatening.
The suspect—who is in his 30′s or 40′s—is in critical condition and is being transported to Harborview. [he died since the linked post was written — Carl]
A 32-year-old officer also sustained minor injuries in the incident, possibly from broken glass, and was taken to Harborview.
A second officer, who is in his 50s, was also taken to Harborview for treatment for a medical condition.
Finally, a female passenger sustained minor bruising while evacuating the second bus.
Christallmighty. I’m sitting here on my commute back home trying to figure out words. I don’t know if I’d passed that driver. Certainly the downtown corridor is one I take almost every day. I wish him the best of luck in a recovery.
If you know anything or have any video of the event, SPD is asking you to call their homicide reporting line at (206) 233-5000.
Obviously the guy who shot the bus driver shouldn’t have had a gun. The Second Amendment looks kinda broken to me — it’s just too easy for people who shouldn’t have guns to get them. Maybe we should fix it.
@Carl, the only problem here is that you’re preaching to the choir. Someone needs to figure out a way to automatically send gun death stories to Youtube gun channels like The Yankee Marshall and Nutin’ Fancy. I’ve also noticed a lot of gun related TV shows showing up on channels like Discovery. Maybe Discovery needs to get flooded with emails from people saying they need a show about the effects of gun violence and accidents as well: Welcome to the Dave Can’t Get His Dick Up Since He Was Shot Through The Spine Show folks.
@1
The Supreme Court has repeatedly said that states can’t ban guns, but that they can and should regulate them. We should take the Supremes’ up on that.
“Maybe Discovery needs to get flooded with emails from people saying they need a show about the effects of gun violence and accidents as well”
See:
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/ar.....id=1487470
This, of course, you probably already know:
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/.....0/929.full
As for bus safety, I wonder if it would be a good idea to let the drivers, properly trained, use tasers? I am against arming the drivers with firearms,because of the danger it could fall into the wrong hands. In the case of Metro driver Mark McLaughlin, neither weapon would have done much good. He was driving the Aurora Bridge segment of then-Route 359, a segment where the driver has his hands full.