Man receives phone call while wife is on hijacked bus in Atlanta

ATLANTA — A metro Atlanta man was at work when he received a terrifying phone call from his wife Tuesday afternoon.

“She called me and I was sitting at my desk working and she told me that some guy had shot another guy on the bus,” Johnny Gilbert said. “I’m like ‘what?’ It just didn’t make sense to me.”

His wife was one of 17 passengers on board when a Gwinnett County transit bus was hijacked in Atlanta. Police said the first call they received was about people being held hostage on the bus in Atlanta and that a gun had gone off.

RELATED: Passenger killed after man hijacks Gwinnett transit bus in Atlanta, leads officers on chaotic chase: APD

“Once I realized that someone had actually shot someone, she was on the phone and I told her to hang up because I was afraid he was going to shoot her or something,” Gilbert said. “Put down the phone, turn it off and sit quietly and don’t tell anyone.”

Gilbert then texted him 15 to 20 minutes later. But there was no response.

“For about 50 minutes, I had no idea what was going on,” he said. “That was the hardest part.”

APD Chief Darin Schierbaum said a police officer went to 45 Ivan Allen Junior Boulevard and when police arrived they saw the suspect inside the bus, but the suspect had forced the driver to leave at gunpoint.

During the chase, the bus appeared to hit several cars, including a Gwinnett County patrol car, as Georgia State Patrol cruisers followed. At one point, authorities appeared to attempt a PIT maneuver on the bus to stop it from rolling. DeKalb police said they used a BearCat vehicle to help disable the bus.

The bus stopped on Hugh Howell Road, between Deer Ridge Drive and Rosser Road. Several passengers were seen getting off the bus with their hands in the air. One person was found with a gunshot wound and was rushed to the hospital, where they died from their injuries, police said.

But without knowing what happened to his wife, Gilbert took matters into his own hands. He used the “Find My Phone” app to find her and went there.

“We’ve been together since I was 26. It was heartbreaking,” Gilbert said of the incident.

His wife usually commutes to work, but it was always the idea of ​​walking around downtown Atlanta alone that worried Gilbert — not a bus ride.

“I never imagined anyone would do this in the afternoon,” he said.

The person charged in the crime is Joseph Grier, 39, police said. He was arrested 19 times, some of which were related to his being armed. Chief Schierbaum said mental health could play a role, but this suspect should never have had a weapon, being a convicted felon.

“Until this stops, nothing will change,” Gilbert said of the suspect who had a criminal record but got his hands on a gun.

Despite the nightmare occurring on a weekday afternoon, Gilbert believes his wife won’t let the incident stop her from making her trips to metro Atlanta.

“You can’t necessarily live in fear, I guess, so she probably will,” he said of her on the bus.