Gunmen Rob Shuttle Bus, Shoot Driver

By JAIME ARON /Associated Press

DALLAS - As highway robbery schemes go, this seemed like a good one:

Three guys join about 60 other people on a casino-bound shuttle bus, wait midway through the late-night ride, then pull out guns and rob the cash-carrying passengers. A car following the bus provides the getaway.

If not for a stubborn bus driver and the quick thinking of cellular phone-carrying passenger, the plan may have worked.

Two of the bandits were arrested early Friday, several hours after the incident began unfolding around 10:30 p.m. Thursday. A third suspect was caught about 7:25 a.m. Friday with help from around 150 officers from more than a dozen agencies.

"They certainly weren't too bright to begin with," Smith County Sheriff J.B. Smith said. "They got up and put on ski masks in the middle of the bus after everybody had seen their faces. They're so ignorant."

The trio were in the Smith County Jail facing $200,000 bond apiece on charges of aggravated robbery and attempted capital murder. They also could face federal carjacking charges, the sheriff said.

The suspected getaway driver was caught around noon and was headed for Smith County to face a robbery charge.

Bus driver Mike Gibbs, who was shot in the face by one of the fleeing gunmen, was in critical condition at East Texas Medical Center in Tyler, where he underwent surgery.

"He took the bullet for all of us," passenger JoAnn Williams said. "He saved our lives."

Gibbs was hit in the arm and lower jaw, with the bullet exiting through his esophagus. To have survived such extensive damage, "there must have been an angel riding on his shoulder," a hospital worker told Smith.

Williams also was being hailed as a heroine because of her call for help.

"I told 911 we were being robbed and we were on our way to the casino," she said Friday morning after returning to Dallas.

She remained on the line about 20 minutes until officers drove up, flashing their lights and signaling for the bus to pull over. Soon after, authorities sealed off a 6-1/2-mile area.

Gibbs, a military veteran who has worked for Dallas-based Shuttleking Inc. for several years, refused to cooperate with the gunmen. He pulled over against their wishes and didn't immediately open the door to let them out.

"He told them, 'Just go ahead and shoot me because I'm going to stop," passenger L.W. Ebsen said.

Once the doors opened, the men fired at authorities, then turned back and shot Gibbs point-blank. They fled into the woods, spilling all their pilfered cash and jewelry into a ditch, Smith said.

Law enforcers found Joe Falcetta, 23, around 3 a.m. and David Carl Adkins, 21, at 4:30 a.m. A police helicopter helped locate Torres Kartik, 25, standing shirtless alongside the highway trying to hitchhike. All three were from Fort Worth.

Stephen Randal Henry, the 34-year-old alleged driver of the red Buick Skylark that trailed the bus, apparently headed for home as he was arrested in the Dallas suburb of Plano.

The bus was bound for the Isle of Capri Casino in Bossier City, La., as part of Shuttleking twice-weekly "Red-Eye Run." The $19 round-trip fare includes a $5 food voucher and a free pull on a slot machine.

The route picks up passengers at four Dallas-area malls, arrives at the casino around midnight and returns by 11 a.m. Shuttleking also makes the run during the day, seven days a week.

Shuttleking president Mitch Goldminz said the gunmen boarded at the first stop in Irving, then sat quietly with the other passengers through two hours of pickups.

The bus then traveled about 100 miles east along Interstate 20 and was nearing Tyler, still about 90 miles west of their destination, when the men stood up, waved their guns and screamed it was a holdup.

"They all had these big old bags," passenger W.D. Davis Sr. said. "That's when it dawned on me what they were doing with those bags."

Smith said law enforcers have recovered one of two shotguns and the handgun they believe was used to shoot Gibbs. "It has one spent cartridge in it," the sheriff said.

Goldminz said Gibbs had a phone, but was in no position to call for help. He said the company was looking into other possible safety measures.

"We're talking to bus companies all over the United States," he said. "But let's face it, these kinds of things can happen anywhere. You can be walking out of your driveway or going through a mall. You always think, 'This isn't going to happen to me.' "