A Rage to Kill (3 page)

Shawn Miller and his sister, Leanna, took seats in rows two and three near the front door on the right side. They didn’t notice the man who sat in the first seat facing the driver until Leanna looked around, studying her fellow passengers. The man looked to her to be in his thirties, and he wore a dark jacket. It was his sunglasses that caught her attention. They had some kind of “shade” coming down on the side so that his eyes were completely hidden. She wondered if he was coming from an optometrist’s office and if the sun was bothering him. He sat silently, staring at the bus driver.

Francisco Carrasco, thirty-one, had been visiting with friends in the north end of the city, and he paid his fare at 80th and Aurora. “I sat on the second seat behind the back stairs in the ‘trailer’ part of the bus on the driver’s side.”

Jeremy Hauglee was nineteen, and he headed as he usually did toward the rear of the bus, sat down and immediately put on his earphones. Soon he was lost in his own world.

Judy Laubach, forty, worked in the financial division at the downtown flagship Nordstrom’s store. She had a flexible work schedule that allowed her to go in as early as nine
A.M
. or as late as noon, depending on her workload. It was very rare for her to head downtown so late, but on this afternoon she had debated going in at all. Finally, knowing she had some work to catch up on, she left home shortly before three, catching Number 359 near the Presbyterian church at Green Lake. She sat on the right side just behind the handicapped section—in the first seats that faced forward. Deep in thought, Judy was only peripherally aware of the man who got on the bus a few stops before the Aurora Bridge.

Herman Liebelt, sixty-nine, caught the bus, as always, near Green Lake. He had finished his weekly three-mile walk around the scenic city lake, had gone to visit an old friend, and was headed to the Urban Bakery for a cup of coffee before heading home to a senior citizens housing building downtown. Liebelt was alone in the world except for some stepchildren in California, but he wasn’t a lonely man at all; he believed in getting out of his apartment and talking to people. When the weather was good, he loved to sit on a bench at Green Lake and discuss life and the world with strangers who paused to chat. He never lacked for someone to talk to; people seemed to be naturally drawn to him.

P. K. Koo was seventy-six, and spoke virtually no English. He took his seat three back from the front on the opposite side from Mark McLaughlin. He watched what was going on around him, and saw a number of people get on at various bus stops. Idly, he noted the tall white man who got on three or four stops before the big bridge.

Aurora Avenue North used to be one of the major thoroughfares in Seattle, but with the advent of the Interstate 5 freeway, it is now only a surprisingly narrow street lined mostly with businesses that saw their good years in the fifties and sixties. Passing decades-old landmarks like the trumpeting elephant sign and the Twin Tee Pees, the number 359 runs through neighborhoods, past motels and restaurants, the Washelli cemetery, the sweeping park with a walking track that surrounds Green Lake, and past the zoo at Woodland Park before it heads into downtown.

At Woodland Park, Mark McLaughlin detoured off Aurora to pause at bus stops along Stone Way North. And then at North 38th, he wrenched the wheel hard and headed up onto the southbound ramp that led back onto Aurora over the long bridge that crosses the Lake Washington Ship Canal. At its highest point, the Aurora Bridge arches 175 feet above the water.

It was a few minutes after three
P.M.

Shortly after the long bus lumbered up the ramp, something happened, something that seemed almost surreal to those passengers who were alert to what was going on around them. They watched it happen almost without comprehension, the way the eye fixes on a magnified blow-up of some everyday item which, enlarged,
looks
foreign. It takes a few moments to recognize what one is actually seeing. The passengers could not compute what
they
were seeing.

There wasn’t even time for panic or for anyone to stop what they watched. And, like many eyewitnesses, later they could not agree on the precise details of what they saw. The
only
thing they would be in consensus about was that a man got up, and walked silently up to the bus driver. Before they could wonder why he was getting up, since there was no stop on the bridge, many passengers heard a series of loud noises—“pops,” “bangs,” “fire-crackers.”

Some who were familiar with guns knew they were hearing gunfire; some were puzzled. And, then, within a matter of seconds, the 20-ton bus began to veer left.

Later, some of the thirty-three passengers on that bus would try to make some sense out of what had happened to them.

“Moments after I got on,” Judy Laubach recalled, “I remember a gentleman getting up and walking past me. He had on a blue, horizontally striped shirt, and he walked up past the people sitting in the front of the bus. I didn’t see the gun, but I heard two gunshots—BOOM! BOOM!—and I said to myself, ‘He just shot the bus driver!’ The bus went across the center lanes. I recall a couple of bumps and the bus came to a stop. I remember praying. I heard some gurgling—something—I don’t know if it was me or a body next to me or what. Then I remember sirens and a rescuer coming to help. I remember looking up at a rescuer and some glass was falling in my face, and I remember him telling me to look down so the glass wouldn’t get in my eyes. The next thing I remember I was in an ambulance, and the bumpy ride tothe hospital.”

Judy Laubach wasn’t sure if she’d stayed inside the bus before it came to a stop, or if she’d been thrown out.

P. K. Koo tried to find the words to describe what had happened. Koo, whose English was so spotty that he needed an interpreter, said he had had a clear view of the gunman. “He said nothing at all. The man didn’t do anything,” Koo recalled as he tried to explain that there had been no fight, no argument, no incident on the bus. “He just got up and went to the driver. I heard two shots. He was about forty, tall, slim—a good-looking man. He had a jacket on and some sunglasses.”

Henry Luna had been reading the manual that had come with his cellular phone. He heard the “pop-pops,” followed by a second burst of sound. “People started yelling ‘Gun! Gun!’ I got down on my knees. I didn’t even know the bus had been in a wreck until some people pulled me out . . .”

Francisco Carrasco didn’t see the shooting. “I was talking with someone when I heard what sounded like a backfire,” he said. “I remember the bus hitting something and I was thrown into the rear stairwell. I covered my head with my arms and grabbed hold of a bar, but when I looked, the whole right side of the bus was gone. If I would have been thrown another foot or two, I would have been gone, too. Diesel fuel was spilling all over me, soaking my clothes and head. I thought it was going to explode so I walked off the bus where the doors in the right side were missing. I remember the ground I got out on was asphalt. I walked across the street, dragging my left leg. There were people who tried to help.”

When Regina King woke up, it was to screams and the sense that the bus had crashed against something. She heard no gunshots and no disturbances.

Thirteen-year-old Lacy Olsen saw it happen. She heard the “pops,” and saw two bright flashes spit from the gun in the man’s hand, and then scarlet blood that erupted, staining Mark McLaughlin’s uniform shirt. Try as she might, she could not remember the man who’d held the gun in his hand. But she knew she had seen the gun, and the muzzle flash. “It happened really quick. I thought the man with the gun was sitting down.”

Lacy couldn’t remember anyone shouting or any angry words. But after the gunshots, the bus took off like a roller coaster. First there was a big bump as it hit something on the bridge, and then there was an awful sense of free-fall as the bus left the bridge. Lacy didn’t know what was down below and she wasn’t even sure that they weren’t still bouncing in the air over the bridge itself.

Bill Brimeyer had seen what happened. “I saw a white male wearing a black leather jacket, a fedora and dark sunglasses standing on the right side of the bus driver. I didn’t hear any argument or conversation. I just observed him shoot the bus driver—maybe two or three times. The bus swerved left. The last thing I remember is the bus falling. After the fall, I climbed out of the window and yelled for people to call nine-one-one.”

And the bus
had
fallen, although some of the shocked passengers thought it had only struck something. The sixty-foot long, double-coached, twenty-ton bus had been a juggernaut without its driver at the wheel; it had careened into the concrete and steel bridge and crumbled it as it plowed through, and then, with its load of passengers, Number 359 had plunged over fifty feet.

Leanna Miller had noticed the man with the sunglasses stand up and move toward the driver just as they started over the Aurora Bridge. “I heard two or three gunshots—it was a ‘popping’ sound, and the man looked like he was trying to take control of the steering wheel. The driver was fighting with the man, and the bus swerved from the far right lane through the railing on the other side, and we went over. I ended up on the floor and everyone was on top of me, and the bus was all torn up. I tried to help people out of the bus.”

Jerome Barquet lived to tell about what he had seen, too. “At about the Aurora Bridge, I observed an unknown male dressed in dark clothing approach the driver as if he was going to ask him a question. I saw him shoot the driver in the back three times. I didn’t see the gun or the shooter’s face. The bus driver slumped over the steering wheel, and the suspect tried to grab the steering wheel. The bus veered left across the northbound lanes of Aurora Avenue North and ran off the east side of the bridge.”

Jeremy Hauglee heard a loud popping sound even while wearing earphones. “I thought it was a rock and then this other guy stood up to see what it was. Then I got down real fast because it was like gunshots. I had thoughts of dying, and then the next thing you know, the bus goes over the side. I remember being at the bottom of the bridge, hoping my body would move and be able to run. I’d heard the gunshots and I thought the dude still had the gun.”

Barbara Thomas heard “three pops like firecrackers. I looked up and saw a big guy, six-two and about two hundred forty pounds, wide shoulders. He was wearing a loose shirt with a blue and gray checked pattern. After three pops, the bus started to turn to the left and hit the railing. . . . It all happened in about thirty seconds.”

So many of the passengers remembered that everything had been normal, quiet, like every other day—
until
they saw the dark-haired man get up from his seat and walk over to Mark McLaughlin.

Brodie Kelly “saw a white man go forward and stand next to the driver. He was middle-aged with dark hair. He shot the driver two times. I saw the powder fly out from the gun. The bus then went off the side of the bridge. I heard people yelling to get off the bus. I crawled off the bus through an exit window. I left my Jansport pack on the bus—with about twenty CDs in it, a small purple notebook and a book,
Kiss of the Spider-woman.”

Jennifer Lee, sixteen, heard two gunshots. She rode the bus down, fully conscious the whole time. She saw people hurt and bleeding all around her after the crash and followed the instructions of a man who helped her through an emergency exit on the right side.

Gary Warfield’s attention was snapped away from his textbook when he heard two pops. He looked up and didn’t see anyone near the driver, but realized to his horror that the bus was out of control and they were going through the guardrail. “I thought we were goners,” he would remember. “I never lost consciousness—I landed flat on my back under a seat.” He tried to move and managed to crawl to a seat and sit there until a firefighter found him.

All around him, people screamed and moaned. A few were staggering blindly toward where the right side of the bus had once been, but where now there was only a wall of daylight.

Below the north ramp to the Aurora Bridge, people ran from their apartments at the sound that seemed like a hundred garbage cans smashed together. Several of the residents who had been loitering next to the giant Troll beneath the bridge realized that they had escaped being crushed by just a few feet. Where there had been lawn and flower gardens, now there was, incredibly, a bus. They huddled next to the Troll as debris rained down from above.

Sasha Babic, who was once a diplomat in Yugoslavia, was sitting at his kitchen table when his wife called that she had seen a bus falling from the sky. He looked out the window and saw that it was true. A bus, all crumpled metal and gaping holes, rested on the front lawn of his building, its two sections angled like a boomerang. It was as if the hand of God Himself had set the bus down. Another six inches forward and the front of it would have sliced through the apartment house. Another foot or two backward and it would have crushed the people under the bridge.

It had come through the evergreen trees, wheels down.

Babic ran to put on some shoes and called to his wife that he was going to try to help.

It was so quiet. Eerily quiet, except for some groans of metal settling. Dust rose from the wreckage; the scene looked like something out of a war at the world’s end.

Kurt and Cat Malvana didn’t hear the crash. Both are profoundly deaf, but Kurt was looking out the window and had seen something that didn’t equate with what he knew to be true of the world; he saw the rear section of a bus dropping from somewhere up above. And then he was shocked to see a human being flying out a window of that bus.