This case is much like the Sergio Aguiar case. A crowd of people decided to save their own hides rather than help a person described as “just a kid” when a 40-year-old maniac began hacking away at the youngster on a bus headed to Winnepeg. Tell me what’s wrong with this picture:

Passengers said the man repeatedly stabbed his seat-mate before beheading him and carrying the victim’s head around the bus.

RCMP Staff Sgt. Steve Colwell wouldn’t confirm those details, but did say a 40-year-old suspect was in RCMP custody and police were planning to interview him.

No charges were immediately laid.

Colwell said the behaviour of the passengers and driver probably prevented anyone else from being hurt.

“It’s not something that happens regularly on a bus,” he said. “You’re sitting there enjoying your trip and then all of a sudden somebody gets stabbed. I imagine it would be pretty traumatic … the way they acted was extraordinary.”

Colwell said they “were very brave. They reacted swiftly, calmly in exiting the bus and as a result nobody else was injured.”

Yes, the passengers bravely tucked their tails between their legs and left an as of yet unidentified child (I assume the victim’s a child since the authorities are being coy about his age and identity) to die knowing that no other person around him cared enough to attempt to save him.

The driver is duty bound to rescue the rest of the passengers and he did return with a heroic trucker, alas too late. But their were at least 37 other passengers on the bus, some strapping young men like Garnet Canton who gave this interview detailing his “heroics” to CBC News:

Garnet Caton, who was sitting in the seat in front of the victim, said he saw the attacker stab his seatmate, a young man sleeping with his headphones on.

Caton said he heard a “blood-curdling scream” and turned around to see the attacker holding a large “Rambo” hunting knife above the victim, “continually stabbing him in the chest area.”

“He must have stabbed him 50 times or 60 times,” said Caton.

Thank goodness Canton’s quick thinking allowed him to be inches from a murder and escape unscathed to give interviews. At least he didn’t do anything rash like try to stop the man by grabbing his arm between stabs. Of course his actions were positively herculean compared to fellow Canadian Cody Olmstead:

Passenger Cody Olmstead, 21, told CBC News he had smoked a cigarette earlier in the trip with the victim, whom he described as a man in his late teens or early 20s. The victim got on the bus in Edmonton, he said.

“I never took the time to know him, but he seemed to be OK, right, just a kid,” said Olmstead, a Nova Scotia man who had been taking the bus from Alberta to Montreal.

[…]

“Like, just everywhere, arms, legs, neck, chest, guts, wherever he could swing it, he got it,” said Olmstead.

“It looked kind of like a scuffle or an argument, you know, and then somebody’s, like, ‘Knife! Knife! Run!’ so I was running up the alleyway, slapping people telling them to get going, move, get off the bus. I got pushed over, some lady got pushed over, I was just making sure everybody was OK, and we all got off the bus,” said Olmstead

As panicked passengers fled the bus, “the attacker was over top of the victim … continually cutting him. I think the victim was gone at that point,” Caton said.

Or so he hopes, as it will keep him sleeping well at night. Disgusting.

If you have the stomach read the reports and remember this the next time you think about traveling up north. You are definitely on your own up there.

h/t NT.A.

Update: The killer was 40-year-old Vince Weiguang Li who cannibalized his victim. He ate parts of 22-year-old Tim McClean, jr. N.T.A. has video of the witness interviews.