A Rage To Kill And Other True Cases by Ann Rule Read Free Book Online

them had come very close to death.
    One of the first detectives arrived at fifteen minutes after three. Someone grabbed his arm and said, “My sister saw it! Some guy shot the driver. He was a white guy, wearing a brown jacket!” And then more voices called to him to go to the front of the bus. It was Sasha Babic, David Leighton, Jim Dietz, and off-duty firefighter Dave Birmingham, who were struggling to help the people caught on the coach’s steps by the folding bus door that wouldn’t open. The old man with the white beard had his head caught in the door and he was unconscious. The young woman trapped there was conscious but said she could feel nothing below her waist. The men exerted all their strength and the door finally gave.
    The rescuers asked the detective to check on a white male who was lying with the lower half of his body underneath the bus. This was the man who had been on the bottom of the pile-up near the folding front door.
    The man, who wore a brown vest, was unconscious. The officer saw that he had an injury to his right temple area, although there was so much blood that it was difficult for him to see how bad it was. The man was quickly loaded into an ambulance and carried away. At Harborview Medical Center, the man was found to be in far too critical condition for anyone to ask his name. ER physicians working over him realized that, along with his other critical injuries he, too, had been shot. In the head.
    Once the scene was being taken care of by professionals, David Leighton, the young Coastguardsman, and his Uncle Jim weren’t sure what to do. Leighton asked a police officer if he wanted a statement, but it was instantly clear there wasn’t time for that—yet. Nephew and uncle, they were covered with wet blood, and they had begun to tremble ever so slightly from the shock of it all. They walked back to Leighton’s red pickup and drove slowly away from the bus crash. Like so many others, they knew they probably wouldn’t sleep that night.
    The Puget Sound Blood Center sent out a call for donors to help the thirty-three injured people who had gone down with the bus. “[The shortage] could be pretty serious by Saturday morning,” Candy Tretter, the manager of the Center said. “Types O and A, both positive and negative, are needed the most—as well as Type B positive.”
    A thousand people showed up to donate blood.

    There was so much to be done. The Seattle AIS (Accident Investigation Section) was already on the scene, and their preliminary analysis matched the statements gasped out by victims who could talk, and those of witnesses who lived beneath the bridge. They could see that the huge bus had been headed south as it came up the ramp onto the bridge and that it had suddenly swerved over the center line while it was still over dry land. It had clipped a small van. Incredibly, that van driver had survived without serious injury. Seconds later, the front of the bus had taken out the cement and iron bridge rails and, like an action scene from a Dirty Harry movie, it had catapulted off the bridge, taking part of the apartment house roof and porch with it.
    The AIS detectives were amazed that the bus had landed on its ruined tires after dropping over 50 feet. It could have been upside down or twisted like a snake, and that would have been worse. They began their Total Station recreation of the accident. To do this, they would take all the measurements of the bus crash both on and below the bridge to a fraction of an inch. Like surveyors, they used tripods, optics—tools that must be perfectly still as they measured. With a reflector, they “shot” the scene with a beam that gave them accurate measurements. It would take them hours and hours, but they were patient and methodical. They would be able to recreate this scene at any time in the future.
    Where there had been frenzy, there was now a degree of organization as the AIS investigators took control of the accident scene.

    Sergeant