A man was stabbed multiple times while riding in a bus traveling on Interstate 5 in La Jolla Wednesday. The attacker jumped out of the moving bus in an attempt to escape capture.
Two lanes of northbound I-5 were closed to traffic at 12:19 p.m. following the stabbing aboard a Greyhound bus, CHP Officer Jim Bettencourt said.
A passenger on the bus was stabbed several times in the neck, in what Lt. Kevin Mayer described was an altercation between two passengers.
The bus driver pulled over to the side of the highway which caused a collision between two vehicles, Mayer said.
The driver attempted to intervene and pushed the suspect out of the bus onto the highway.
Soon after arriving, San Diego police set up a perimeter and searched for the suspect.
CHP officers received a report from campus police at UC San Diego saying there was a man with a bloody arm on the campus near the hospital.
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An alert was sent via the UCSD emergency messaging system:
"There is a stabbing suspect heading towards Thornton Hospital, Hispanic male adult, early 20s to 30s, 5' 6" in height wearing a white tank top and no hat with visible tattoos carrying a black bag. Unknown if suspect is still carrying knife. Suspect seen near East Campus Office Building. Contact UCSD Police if you see suspect, do not approach suspect if seen. More information to follow."
Officers say they found the suspect, identified as 35-year-old Gilbert Dominguez, and took him into custody.
The victim, described by police as 27 years old, was transported to Scripps Memorial Hospital, according to a spokesperson for the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department.
There were 17 people on the bus at the time of the incident. Mayer said they would be interviewed as part of the investigation.
The bus was traveling from San Ysidro to Oceanside and had
Greyhound Lines Communications Manager Crystal Booker said a relief bus was on its way to pick up the travelers.
"We enforce a zero tolerance policy in respect to unruly or aggressive customers. In the event that a customer is unruly or aggressive onboard the bus, drivers are trained to pull the bus over in a safe location, contact the local authorities and remove the customer from the bus. We are fully cooperating with local authorities on their investigation of this incident and conducting an internal investigation of our own to determine exactly what happened," Booker said in a statement.
