Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Live Today

Greyhound Bus Attack: Passenger Attempted to Slit Throat of Bus Driver

Aired October 03, 2001 - 13:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: They stopped bus service after this attack in Tennessee this morning, where a passenger attempted to slit the throat of the bus driver. Then people died when the bus crashed.

I believe we have on the phone now, do we, Dr. Ralph Bard. Dr. Bard operated on the bus driver. The bus driver talked to him, and we can find out more who went on.

Dr. Bard, can you hear me?

DR. RALPH BARD, BUS DRIVER'S SURGEON: Yes, sir, I can.

BROWN: Tell me first the bus driver's condition.

BARD: He's in good condition. He had serious injury, but he's doing very well, and latest report I had is he was sitting up and talking to his brother. His brother is a firefighter from Atlanta who as soon as he found out what was going on, came up. What actually got me in all of this is I've seen a couple of reports on the news reported the driver had been killed, and I wanted to get ahold of his family tell him that was not true, he was doing well.

BROWN: In fact, that was a report we heard this morning, the driver had died, was killed in the attack. Good to know that that was not true.

Could you tell what kind of weapon made the injury when you did the surgery?

BARD: Well, it was obviously a sharp object of some type, because the -- there were cuts in the neck. It looked like their was two separate cuts that actually came together the make one long, deep cut. And the driver was conscious throughout the entire thing, and when I asked him what he thought the device was that caused the injury, he said he thought it was a razor or box cutter.

BROWN: What else did he tell you about the incident, what led up to it?

BARD: Well, we actually had quite a bit of time to talk, because it took about 45 minutes from the time that I evaluated him, and we decided we needed to go to surgery until we got the operating room set up, and so we just talked a little bit in the meantime. He never did lose consciousness throughout the entire thing, and he was pretty calm throughout.

He said that his normal run that he makes is from Indianapolis to Atlanta. He actually is from Marietta, Georgia. He was making his usual run. And the bus goes down apparently through Louisville, Kentucky and then to Nashville and then down past Manchester, on to Atlanta.

The -- to the best of his recollection, the bus driver thinks that he picked this fellow up in Louisville, Kentucky. He described him as being tall and thin, 150-160 pounds, maybe 5'10" or 11". He also described him as being Middle Eastern, and I guess he got that from an accent, because I asked him about it being dark, and it was, and how well he saw him, but he was pretty sure about his height, and weight, and also the fact that he did not have a beard.

BROWN: If I can just interrupt here briefly, what we're being told by authorities is the man was carrying -- was not a Middle Eastern, was carrying a Croatian passport. In any case, go on with what the driver told you.

BARD: Right. That's what some of the police officers who came to the hospital also told me. Anyway, the driver told me that this fellow, whoever he was, had asked, you know, when the stops were going to be and the time and so forth. And actually the driver, the first time he asked driver, he said he was going to make an announcement. That was shortly out of Louisville, and he did announce that the next layover would be around Manchester, Tennessee, and it would be about seven hours and 15 minutes.

The fellow came up and questioned this bus driver on at least two more occasions, and asked him route and time type information. The driver at the time didn't think it was particularly suspicious.

The fellow came back again the third time, and this was near exit 105 on I-24 near Manchester, Tennessee, and didn't say a word to him, but just basically slashed him with this -- whatever he had. The driver said either razor or box cutter. When this happened, of course, that caused rather profuse bleeding, he immediately leaned over the driver and actually took hold of the wheel and drove the bus off of the highway into the median, and the driver at least told me he had the impression that the guy was trying to drive into the oncoming traffic. The bus flipped several times and ended up with the driver's side up, and so the driver then got out of the window, his escape window that he has over there, and actually went down the freeway a distance of about 200 yards trying to find some help. Of course it was early in the morning; it was dark.

BROWN: And he's bleeding profusely.

BARD: He's bleeding, right. He's holding hand over neck to keep from bleeding, and he could have easily bled to death with the injuries that he had. And so he's trying to get help. And at that freeway there -- I don't know how it is in most places, but in Tennessee, it usually has a fence along it, so he couldn't get past the fence, and so he went back to the bus, and by that time, some emergency personnel were there, and they grabbed him, saw his injuries, grabbed him and took him immediately to the hospital.

I was notified because the emergency room physician at the hospital Dr. Reese Cummings (ph), and as soon as she heard there was a bus accident, and called what we call disaster protocol. That's where all the doctors and all the hospital personnel that she can find come in. And I'm going to tell you, just about everybody I know that works at that hospital was there.

ZAHN: And just help me on a couple of things. You're in Manchester now, is that right?

BARD: I'm actually in my office in Tullahoma. Tullahoma is about 20,000. Manchester is about 12,000-13,000.

BROWN: OK, thanks. Go on.

BARD: In any case. When I got there, Reese immediately directed me to see this gentlemen with the injury, and I went and I looked at him, and I did a cursory examination, felt like he had a significant vaster (ph) injury and that he would require surgery, but that we could control it. We talked about possibly transferring the patient, but because I do this kind of stuff, I felt very comfortable with it, and we just took him to operating room, and you know, and explored his neck and repaired his vaster injuries, and ligated whatever we needed to, and he did fine, and he's now doing quite well, and his hematocrit (ph) and vitals signs and everything stayed pretty good. He had one slight drop in blood pressure, but that's not unusual, and he's now alert and doing fine.

BROWN: And the attacker -- I don't know whether to call him a hijacker or an attacker, whatever we want to call him, I thought I saw a report earlier that he was one of the 10 people who died. Is that what you've been told?

BARD: That's is what I've been told. I've been told by the country medical examiner. His name is Dr. Al Branda (ph) and he's a doctor also. He was there early in the morning with all of us, with the rest of the physicians on staff there, in the emergency room, and he's the one who actually told me that it was a Croatian passport, and also told me that the attacker had been killed in an accident. And as a matter of fact,. at the time, that I got out of surgery, around 7:00 in the morning, he was still at the scene, he was still at the bus; they hadn't pulled him out yet.

BROWN: And, Dr. Bard, can you tell us anything about other people who were injured in this, what their condition is, the kind of injuries they suffered?

BARD: Well, I can tell you about the patients that we had at our hospital. Some patients were taken directly to other facilities. We got five patients. We got the bus driver. We got another lady who had a leg injury and a concussion, and we stabilized her, and then transferred up to Vanderbilt. We don't have neurologist or neurosurgeon on call. We thought that might necessary, so we transferred her.

ZAHN: That's in Nashville, correct?

BARD: Vanderbilt's in Nashville, yes, sir.

And then we had two other folks with hand injuries, and as a matter of fact, when I was coming out of the operating room, finishing my neck surgery on the bus driver, Dr. Eckstein (ph), who's and orthopedic surgeon, was taking another passenger in to work on his hand, so that hand injury I know went to surgery, and then there was another person that had a hand injury, and then another patient that I know of that had chest pain.

But to the best of my knowledge, all of the four patients that we kept are all doing very well. I know my patient is doing great. And the lady that was transferred, when she came in, she was unconscious, but by the time that she'd left, she was talking to the ER physician, though I think she's done well, but I haven't heard the follow-up report.

BROWN: Dr. Bard, that's some morning you've had.

BARD: Yes.

BROWN: Nice work. Nice work down there. And nice work with us this afternoon in telling us what happened.

BARD: I really appreciate it, sir.

BROWN: Thank you, sir. Dr. Ralph Bard, who woke up early this morning to save a bus driver's life, a Greyhound bus driver's life, who'd been slashed.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com