Catherine Rusoff
Atlanta police said a person was shot to death on a bus Tuesday afternoon, prompting officers on a chase for miles from the city into neighboring suburbs, with television news footage showing the bus plowing through the rush hour traffic and hitting several vehicles.
News helicopters followed the dramatic chase of the Gwinnett County Transit bus, which police said took off after officers responded to a report of gunshots on a bus and a possible hostage situation shortly after 4:30 p.m. near downtown Atlanta.
Ben Gray/AP
“Our initial call was an armed man on the bus, who was holding hostages, and there was possibly a gun fired,” Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum said at a news conference Tuesday night.
An officer arrived about a minute after the initial 911 call and “confronted the perpetrator, who then forced the bus driver to leave,” triggering the chase, Schierbaum said.
Atlanta police said the bus ended up stopped miles away in neighboring DeKalb County. The suspect, identified by Schierbaum as 39-year-old Joseph Grier, was taken into custody. Grier, a convicted felon with 19 prior arrests, was armed with a handgun, Schierbaum said.
One of the people on board the bus died apparently from a gunshot wound, Schierbaum revealed. There were no reports of any other injuries to passengers or the driver.
Schierbaum said there were a total of 17 people on board the bus during the chase, including the driver. One of the 911 calls dispatchers received from the bus remained open throughout the chase, Schierbaum said, helping authorities bring it to an end.
“It was this information that our dispatchers and dispatchers heard that was relayed initially to the Atlanta Police Department, and then to the Georgia State Patrol, and then to our partners in Gwinnett… to help bring an end to our hostage situation,” Schierbaum said.
John Gilbert of suburban Dacula said his wife, Paulette, takes the bus to and from downtown Atlanta to work three days a week. He said she called him from the bus and told him a man had shot another man. Gilbert told his wife to get off the phone because he didn’t want the man to think she was calling the police and shoot her.
So he waited 40 or 45 minutes without knowing what was going on before his wife finally called him as soon as she got off the bus.
“I felt like I had a hole in me,” Gilbert said through tears. “I’m glad she’s okay.”
Television news footage showed the bus hitting several vehicles and crossing onto the wrong side of a road with police in pursuit. At one point, a police car appears to pass in front of the bus, but it continues onward.
The chase ended when the bus ran off the road, DeKalb County Police Chief Mirtha Ramos told reporters. Authorities then used a BearCat to “immobilize” the bus, she added.
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