My wife and I were headed down to Winnipeg, Manitoba, for school. Then the bus happened. I have found it very difficult since then.

We had started in the Northwest Territories and changed buses in Edmonton, Alberta, around midnight. At the time of the attack later that day, I was sitting with my wife on the bus in the third row from the back on the driver’s side, right across the aisle next to Mr. Li.

Mr. Li had boarded the bus in Brandon, Manitoba sometime between 5 and 7 p.m. the next day. I noticed Mr. Li right away, in fact very much so. He just seemed like a very weird person and all out of place. He was watching everyone that was on the bus, and seemed very paranoid.

Originally he’d been sitting at the front of the bus. When he moved to the back of the bus after a smoke break between Brandon and Winnipeg, he was looking at each and every person as he was walking, just watching everyone. Then he sat across the aisle from my wife and me.

I didn’t mention anything to my wife about my impression of him; I just kept it to myself. I’ve taken the bus many, many times, and have always noticed a fair few odd people on the bus.

Garnet Caton, who was one of the first witnesses interviewed, told the media he heard a bloodcurdling scream. The scream was coming from Tim. I heard it as well, but at that point I was already up to the front of the bus. I had actually seen Mr. Li pull out the knife and stab Tim. Sitting right there, I had been the first person to see stuff.

I’d been watching Mr. Li before it happened. He had a bag, a roll of toilet paper and a big two-liter bottle of iced tea that he wouldn’t let go of, as if these everyday objects were the most precious things to him. There was definitely something wrong with him.

At one point he wanted to take a sip of his iced tea, but since he needed two hands to drink from the two-liter bottle, he actually held the roll of toilet paper under his chin. He was rocking back and forth, almost chanting or something, but it wasn’t in English.

Then he went into the bag and pulled out the knife. Coming from a small community where hunting and fishing and all that are really big, I didn’t really think of it. On any given day I could walk down the street and see maybe 20 people with knives walking around.

At that point he looked at me and then turned and started attacking Tim. I got up and started yelling, “Everybody get off the bus! Stop the bus! Someone’s being stabbed!” I got up to the front, told the bus driver what was going on. He stopped the bus and started getting everyone off.

I looked back and saw that my wife was still at the back of the bus. There was a mother and a young boy sitting behind her, and they were passing the young boy over my wife, and she was helping to make sure he got over there to his older cousin who was sitting in front of us.

The aisle was all clogged up, so I jumped over several seats to get back to her, and then I put her and the boy’s family in front of me, so that I was between them and Mr. Li. This whole time, he was still attacking Tim.

Tim knew he was in serious trouble, and he tried to fight back. He was swinging, trying to throw punches and trying to grab the knife.

Before the attack, I’d talked to Tim briefly – just the normal bus conversation: “Hey, where you headed?” All that stuff. He seemed like a really nice guy…the kind of person you could easily be friends with. He was sleeping right up until the point he got stabbed, listening to music, resting his head on the window.

By the time I’d gotten back to help my wife, Tim was already dead, because Mr. Li was repeatedly stabbing him.

I looked back about three times; the first time, when I went to get my wife, the second time when I got between her and Mr. Li, and the third time, when I got off the bus. All three times, he was still stabbing Tim.

I kept telling people, “Keep moving, don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t look back, keep going,” and after everyone got off the bus, that was when a truck driver came.

He stopped and helped the bus driver barricade the door closed. The truck driver then tried to go back on to see if he could save Tim, got two steps up, and at that point Mr. Li had already severed Tim’s head and came running at him with the head. The truck driver jumped off the bus and they closed the door.

The door seemed to be having problems with its hydraulics or something though, because it wouldn’t quite close, and Mr. Li was waving the knife at them through the door.

I did see the head as well, but I turned my wife away, so she didn’t see it. Probably at least a dozen people saw the head. Most people had run behind the bus, where luckily there was an overflow bus that had been driving a few minutes behind us. We all went into the overflow bus and they barricaded the door until the police got there.

At that point people were just all in shock, saying, “How could this happen?” and a few people made comments that they hoped Mr. Li would get the death penalty. Some people were crying.

When the police came, it was about 9 o’clock. There was a standoff until about 1:30 in the morning, and we left the scene just after 1 a.m. By the time we got to the hotel it was after 3 a.m., and I called my family to let them know what happened. They thought it was a joke.

Surviving The Scene

Since the attack, I’ve surrounded myself with good friends and family. We did talk to the crisis counsellors provided, but they were only there until Friday, and we were in the hotel until Wednesday.

Neither my wife nor I have been sleeping very much. We both think about it all the time, because it’s still very fresh in our memory. We can’t sleep without lights on and the TV on for some noise in the background. I don’t get more than two or three hours sleep at a time.

My wife doesn’t like going out in public places any more. She doesn’t even like going to the mall or anything like that, whereas before shopping was almost her career.

I was out last night wandering with my brother – we’d gone out to get some snacks – and every time a vehicle drove by, I watched it until it was far, far away, because I was afraid someone would come out and attack us, or something bad would happen. I’m going to try to put this behind me, but I can definitely see it will have some long term effects on both my wife and I.

It was so random and could have been anybody killed on that bus. When Mr. Li took out that knife and looked at me, I thought it was my time. It was all in the matter of seconds when he pulled out the knife, looked at me and then stabbed Tim.

I don’t think there would have been anything that could have prevented Vince Li from becoming violent. I think it was more than just his mental instability, because he was drinking that bottle of iced tea and sniffing a lot, repeatedly. I personally think Mr. Li was on drugs, though I don’t know if that’s been disproved.

I don’t think there was any way to physically overpower him, not with the people that were in the close vicinity of Mr. Li in that short amount of time. I was the only guy within the area that could have done anything. I’m a fairly big guy – I’m almost six feet tall, 180 pounds, fairly well-built – and I don’t even think I could have taken him.

My thought was that the first thing was to stop the bus so that everyone could get off. Yes, it is a tragic event, but we’re all lucky the rest of us got off that bus. “Lucky” is really a bad choice of words, but it could have been so much worse.

I just acted on my instinct and I didn’t want it to turn into a standoff, so I did what I could. Tim is the hero of all of this. He gave up his life so that all of us could live. That’s what I think of Tim. I’m thanking him every single day that I’m alive.

Vince Li looked like he had no regrets while he was doing it. At first I wanted Canada to bring back the death penalty for this, but now I just think, don’t let Vince Li back on the streets. He could easily do it again.