Austin police are looking for a man who hijacked a Capital Metro bus Monday morning and forced the driver to take him to Southwest Austin.
Austin Police Sgt. Richard Stresing said a middle-aged Hispanic male boarded the bus at 6:56 a.m. on the corner of Fifth and San Jacinto streets and told the driver he had a knife, demanding she take the bus off course to Southwest Austin. The driver said she did not see a knife, and the bus was carrying no passengers at the time. The suspect, who is wanted for unlawful restraint, a Class A misdemeanor, ran into the woods after being dropped off at Old Bee Caves Road and Fletcher Lane, Stresing said.
Austin police set up a perimeter around the area, but an initial search did not yield any results, Stresing said.
Stresing said the suspect is 5 feet 8 inches tall and has a mustache and a soul patch under his bottom lip. The suspect has long black hair that was pulled back into a ponytail at the time of the incident. The suspect was also described by the bus driver as "very dirty," and police believe he is homeless, Stresing said.
Capital Metro is trying to obtain footage of the incident from the bus's camera, said company spokeswoman Misty Whited.
Every Capital Metro bus is equipped with a camera activated by erratic movements by the bus, including when the bus is involved in an accident. Drivers can also activate the cameras, she said.
"We're trying to figure out if there's video on it that would help us," Whited said, adding that the driver might not have been able to activate the cameras with the suspect behind her.
Whited said some buses are also equipped with surveillance cameras but that the hijacked bus was not on a route prone to security issues.
"We haven't really had anybody get on a bus and demand to be driven way off of their route or anything like that," Whited said.
Whited said the hijacked bus was running along the No. 19 route, which travels from the Anderson Lane-Burnet Road area to downtown.
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