A new phase of jihad? Man stabbed to death and decapitated on bus in Canada

On a Greyhound bus 40 miles from Winnipeg, Manitoba at 8:30 p.m. on July 30, a 40 year old man who was sitting next to a young, sleeping man suddenly began to stab the young man with a large knife. Proceeding robotically, he stabbed him 40 or 50 times, many times in his chest, but also in every part of his body. The bus stopped and all the passengers fled the bus. Then the killer beheaded and gutted the victim.

I’ve read three stories on this. No information has come from the uber PC Canadian Mounties at all. They don’t even give the names of the victim and killer, because, they say, it will “compromise” the investigation. (These Canadian police sound as about as motivated and effective as the terminally world-weary sheriff played by Tommy Lee Jones in the evil Coen brothers’ ultra-nihilistic film No Country for Old Men, which also involved a robotic killer.) Almost all the information in the three stories comes from a passenger named Garnet Caton who was sitting in front to the seat where the murder occurred. The MSNCB story has the most details of the murder and decapitation. The CNN story has the least. The story from National Terror Alert provides a detail that’s missing in the MSNBC story, of how they first realized that the victim was being beheaded:

Caton, the driver and a trucker who had stopped at the scene later boarded the vehicle to see if the victim was still alive.

“When we came back on the bus, it was visible at the end of the bus he was cutting the guy’s head off and pretty much gutting him up,” said Caton.

Also, a detail that was only in the CNN story: after the passengers fled the bus, a truck driver stopped and gave them crow bars and wrenches to keep the killer from getting off the bus. He must be the same truck driver who re-entered the bus with Caton and the driver and saw the beheading in process.

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Here is the complete text of Caton’s interview with the Canadian Press, which I found at this blog:

“He put his bags in the overhead compartment. He didn’t say a word to anybody. He seemed totally normal. He had sunglasses on. He sat down. And then, about a half an hour later, we heard this blood-curdling scream and turned around and the guy was standing up, stabbing this guy repeatedly, repeatedly, like, I dunno, must have been 40, 50 times in the neck and in the chest area. When he was attacking him, he was calm as like, it was like he was at the beach. He (was) totally calm, he didn’t say anything. There was no rage or, or anything. He was just like a robot stabbing the guy.

“We exited the bus. Everybody got off the bus. But a few of us, me and the trucker and one of the Greyhound drivers went back on the bus to go see what was going on and that’s when we saw … he had the guy on the ground, he was cutting his head off and pretty much gutting him.

“That trucker … he had a crowbar and we ran and got a hammer and stuff. Me and the other bus driver, there, tried to guard the door; put our bodies up against the door and, you know, waiting for him to come out and whatnot.

“And he went back and brought the head to the front and pretty much, you know, displayed it to us like that and then dropped it on the ground in front of us. Very calmly, all very calmly, he was wearing sunglasses and like, you know, it was no big deal to him.”

- end of initial entry -

Allan Wall writes:

Re the Canadian bus stabbing. Did nobody on that bus do anything to help the guy? They all just got off the bus ?

LA replies:

He was repeatedly stabbing the victim in the chest with a 12 inch hunting knife, I think by the time people realized what was happening it was probably too late to save him.

The details are still quite sketchy… however, given our Orwellian media, they will probably remain so.

According to Caton, the passenger, he stabbed him 40 to 50 times. So he was just slaughtering the man’s body after he was dead.

A reader writes:

Although I realize that VFR is not a victim’s rights advocacy site, and in fact I don’t even know your thoughts on gun rights, I did want to comment on this:

“On a Greyhound bus 40 miles from Winnipeg, Manitoba at 8:30 p.m. on July 30, a 40 year old man who was sitting next to a young, sleeping man suddenly began to stab the young man with a large knife. Proceeding robotically, he stabbed him 40 or 50 times, many times in his chest, but also in every part of his body. The bus stopped and all the passengers fled the bus. Then the killer beheaded and gutted the victim. “

What I would add is that, like the Eloi you mention, the Canadians have allowed themselves to be wholly disarmed, both literally and figuratively. Literally, because no one on the bus apparently was bearing a firearm (and willing to use it), which is probably unlikely in a bus with much ridership in the US except in the stricter gun control states. And figuratively because no rider was willing to attack the attacker with any handy items (backpack, umbrella, suitcase, whatever) in an attempt to preserve life. These Eloi have given over the protection of life to unaccountable, un-present others.

LA replies:

In the very sketchy accounts, which really just come from one passenger, Garnet Caton, there is not the slightest mention of any thought or attempt to stop the murder. The focus was solely on everyone escaping the bus. But then, with the help of a truck driver who stopped at the scene and handed out crow bars and wrenches, the bus driver, Caton, and the truck driver kept the killer from exiting the bus

Your main point stands. If one passenger had had a firearm, he could have shot the attacker dead within, say, 30 seconds of the attack beginning. He might not have saved the life of Tim McLean, but the rest of the horrifying event, including the beheading, including the 50 stab wounds, including the killer brandishing the severed head at the passengers, and also including the monstrous injustice that the killer gets to live and breathe on this planet for the next 40 years while Tim McLean moulders in his grave, would have been prevented.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 01, 2008 12:14 AM | Send