The Mentally Ill and Handguns - A Personal Account [View All]

[pauldp]

On November 27th 1998, the worst bus accident in Seattle Metro's 25 year history occurred. The driver of a southbound Route 359 express bus was shot twice just as the bus was crossing the Aurora Bridge which crosses the Lake Washington Ship Canal. After shooting the driver, the shooter, Silas Garfield Cool, a 43 year old man with severe emotional problems, turned his .380 automatic handgun on himself.The bus dropped 50 feet into the Fremont neighborhood, bouncing off the roof of an apartment building before hitting the ground below. Another couple hundred yards and the bus would have plunged 160 ft into the canal. In addition to the shooter, the driver Mark McLauglin, 44, and another passenger, Herman Liebelt, 69, died. 32 passengers were injured.

My wife and I were less than 100 yards away when it happened. We were visiting her family in Seattle for Thanksgiving. About 12 of us were sightseeing, and had stopped to look at the Fremont Troll, a big sculpture created by local artists underneath the Aurora Bridge. We heard a crash, looked up and watched in disbelief as a huge articulated bus flew over the side of the bridge, slammed into a building and hit the ground. A couple of us said "what was that?" - even though we just watched it happen and had seen it clearly. It was surreal. A few moments of silence and then the screaming and moaning started. Most of us rushed down the hill to help the victims. There were a few young children with us so some stayed back to comfort them. The back of the bus had a large gash in it, a few people climbed out of the wreckage. My 3 brothers-in-law climbed in and began helping people. One guy had a compound fracture in his leg, others were lying on the floor unconscious or moaning. The front of the bus was partially on its side against the ground, so that 4 or 5 people were jammed against the front door and the stairs in a suffocating pile. 2 locals and I pried the doors open and the heap of people slid out onto the ground. Out of the pile we pulled a large african american woman, and elderly gentleman, a caucasian woman and a middle aged man with blood streaming out of his mouth. All of them were conscious except for the middle aged guy. The elderly gentleman was Herman Liebelt, he was having trouble breathing, and we found out later died on the way to the hospital. The unconscious man with the blood flowing out of his mouth was the shooter, Silas Cool. We did not know at the time that he had been the shooter. He was still breathing but covered in blood, so we pulled him to a safe area and went back to comfort the other passengers. Most were very disoriented and did not know what had happened. Some said the driver had been shot but they did not know who shot him. Others thought the driver had intentionally swerved off the bridge. After what seemed like forever, but probably was only about 15 minutes, the first group of paramedics arrived and we helped load the victims into the ambulances.

Later we heard that Cool had been identified as a mentally unstable loner. He had boarded the bus right before the bridge, sat down across from the driver, and before anyone knew what happened, quickly pulled his gun and shot the driver twice and then shot himself. Only a couple of people on the bus saw it because it happened so quickly. That night we ate leftover turkey and pumpkin pie in our PTSD haze and wondered "how the hell did that guy get a gun?".