SPOKANE – A man hijacked a Spokane Transit bus at gunpoint and demanded to be driven to a tavern, where shots were fired before he was taken into custody Friday.
No one was injured, Spokane Transit Authority spokeswoman Molly Myers said.
The man was booked into the Spokane County Jail for investigation of first-degree kidnapping and two counts of first-degree assault, Spokane police spokesman Cpl. Tom Lee said.
The incident began when a man boarded a bus on a scheduled layover at the Spokane Intermodal Center about 10 a.m. and confronted the driver, Myers said. There were no other passengers on the bus, she said.
The driver took the man to the Hillyard neighborhood in northeast Spokane, where he was let off and walked to a nearby tavern, she said.
Lee said a man was arrested outside the Special K Tavern after firing shots at a tavern bartender and patron. Both shots missed, and no one was injured, Lee said.
Tyrene Mellon, a bartender at the Special K Tavern, told KREM-TV that a man she knows as a customer showed up with a gun and fired shots. She and other bar patrons disarmed the man and shoved him outside, where he was arrested by police, she said.
Myers said the man told the bus driver he “just wanted to go to jail.”
Lee said the man pulled a handgun and fired after being refused service at the tavern. One shot burrowed into the bar in front of a patron and the second struck the wall behind Mellon’s head, he said.
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