I caught the bus into town this evening for a drink with some Conservative colleagues, but the journey to Manchester did not go entirely to plan. In fact, I count myself lucky that I have not been injured.
My bus was progressing smoothly - and on time - until we reached the Langworthy Road area. I was listening to my iPod and reading a text message on my phone, so I wasn’t really paying attention to the world around me, until suddenly I was shaken by an almighty bang. I looked up and the outer pane of the window immediately next to me had shattered completely - fortunately the doubling glazing had held firm and the inner pane had held intact.
The bus window had been shot at - probably with a pellet air rifle or something similar. The point of impact was no more than a couple of feet from where I was sitting. If the shot had been even slightly more powerful, I would have been completely showered with glass, or myself or a fellow passenger could have been hit by the pellet itself. Even as it was, the shock could easily have brought on something much more serious like a panic attack or even a heart attack.
The bus driver was very calm. He’d seen it all before, which is in itself very worrying, and didn’t seem very confident that anyone would be brought to book for this sort of incident. He pulled over at Pendleton Church and all the passengers disembarked and boarded the next bus while he waited for the police. The passengers were all lovely and I was repeatedly asked if I was okay - as I had been sat nearest the impact. I checked to make sure that the police had been called and boarded the next bus with everyone else; after all I hadn’t seen anything more than the bus driver and couldn’t have even said where we were when the shot was fired.
If this is a regular occurance - and the bus driver’s attitude indicated that it had happened before - then it is only a matter of time before some gets seriously injured in a similar incident. Innocent passengers could easily be killed, blinded or maimed by a stray pellet, and whichever yob decided that using a bus for target practice clearly has no regard whatsoever for anyone other than himself. I’ve had a very lucky escape, the next bus might not be so fortunate.
You have my sympathies - glad you’re ok: I was shot at through my lounge and kitchen windows when I lived in Wolverhampton and can testify as to what a frightening experience it can be. There have been areas in Langworthy where buses and taxies would not go for fear of attacks; how strange that the Council have been telling us that we’ve little to fear from crime (except when it suits them in bringing in ever more authoritarian measures).
Yup, been there too - my windscreen was hit by an air-rifle pellet when I was on the way to work.
To be fair to the police, they visibly stepped up patrols on the road where it happened for the next few days.
Jeez glad you’re okay mate!
Air rifles and related weapons seem to be ever on the increase and are a serious risk to everyone’s safety IMHO. Not only are incidents like this all too common but some of these weapons look amazingly realistic as well and owners could easily find a barrel of a police firearm pointing at them one day.
Ironically today I had to collect and transport half a dozen air rifles from an Army married quarters estate in Kent - and those were collected in only a few months by the two local community PCs who only work day shifts! Oh and the destination of these seized rifles? Our firearms training wing to use in tactical training!
(I’m sure my clever name change isn’t too hard to crack! ;-))