At 6.37pm on Friday the 18th of September, West Mercia Police officers were called to Court Street in Madeley, in Telford. A bus driver, the report said, had been assaulted by a man.
The bus was the service 100 to Sutton Hill. What happened next is best told in the force's own words. "During the assault, the driver was ejected from the vehicle." And then: "The bus was then driven along Park Way towards the High Street, driving on the wrong side of the road and colliding with multiple vehicles."
A Sikh driver ejected from his own bus on a Friday evening, and a single decker bus loose on the wrong side of a town road with nobody at the wheel who was meant to be there.
The wrong side of the road
Madeley's High Street is one way. The Shropshire Star reports that the bus was driven down it in the wrong direction.
Tom Barnett was coming the other way in a loaded work van. "He came down at me when I was driving up the high street," he told the Star. "I had to pull into the parking space by the old Charlie's chip shop. He clearly wasn't stopping for anyone, it happened so quickly." Then, he said, "a herd of people came running down the street after it."
Another resident, Paula Canessa, told the paper that a young woman had been directing traffic and pedestrians away from the bus. "She deserves recognition for that," she said.
Police say only that the bus was "eventually stopped". Photographs published by Telford Live show a police cordon around it in Kemberton Road, which stayed closed for several hours and reopened at around 9.40pm. By a mercy nobody planned, the force says no one other than the driver is believed to have been hurt.
Ten minutes
Superintendent Edward Hancox, who leads local policing in Telford, put the response in one sentence. "Officers were on the scene, and had made the arrest, within 10 minutes of the first call being received. This included armed officers deploying from Malinsgate Police Station."
A man of 33 was arrested at the scene on suspicion of robbery and dangerous driving. The force first gave his age as in his 20s and corrected it the next day. When police last updated the public, on Saturday afternoon, he remained in custody. He has not been named, and he has not been charged. Under English law that leaves the question of who did what to a court, and nothing written here answers it.
The driver did not suffer serious injuries. He was assessed by paramedics at the scene and taken to hospital for further treatment. He has not been named either, and police say he "has asked that his privacy is respected at this time."
PTI, the Indian news agency, described him as "A British Sikh driver", and The Tribune, an Indian newspaper, reported that footage showed an attempt to pull him by his beard. West Mercia Police has said nothing about his faith and nothing about motive. It has named two suspected offences, robbery and dangerous driving, and the Shropshire Star reports that it has not confirmed the authenticity or full context of the videos circulating online. Which is pretty insane to me because you can watch them for yourself...
Those videos did circulate, and residents asked whether they should be shared at all, many apparently saying, in the Star's report, that it was "just not fair on him or his family". Police have asked anyone with dashcam, CCTV, mobile phone or doorbell footage from Court Street, Park Way or the High Street to send it to them instead. This seems a little off to me, like a "cover up".
The ones who ran towards it
Of everything the police have said, one line is worth reading twice. Superintendent Hancox thanked "those members of the public who came to the driver's aid and offered their help and support following what was understandably a distressing incident."
When a lawyer asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbour?" (Luke 10:29), the answer was a story about a man left hurt at the side of a road. Two men saw him and passed by on the other side. The third was a stranger. "But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him, And went to him, and bound up his wounds" (Luke 10:33 to 34). On a Friday night in Madeley, people ran down the street after a bus, a young woman directed traffic and people away from it, and members of the public went to a hurt man instead of passing by.
The spiritual lesson is far deeper here... You may be the man/womanin the road, unable to help yourself spiritually, and Christ is the one who came where we were. "But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8) He died for our sins, was buried, and rose again the third day (1 Corinthians 15:3 to 4), and the salvation He offers is a gift, not a wage. "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast." (Ephesians 2:8 to 9)
To go deeper, I go through the gospel and the Scriptures on my channel, AVS Talks Christianity on YouTube.
Sources
The account of the incident, the times, the arrest and the driver's condition are from West Mercia Police's release of 18 September and its update of 19 September. The route, the one way High Street, the road closure and the eyewitness accounts are from the Shropshire Star's summary of what is known and its eyewitness report. The cordon in Kemberton Road is from Telford Live. The description of the driver as Sikh is from PTI, as carried by the Daily Excelsior, and the report of the beard is from The Tribune.
The photographs of Court Street and Park Way are by Richard Law and the photograph of the High Street is by Mat Fascione, all from Geograph via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 2.0. They were taken before the incident and show the streets, not the scene. Every quotation of Scripture is from the Authorised Version.
