Driver, Passengers Capture Man in Bus Stop Stabbing

Overhearing a woman cry out for help, a driver stopped his bus Tuesday afternoon and helped two passengers run down and restrain an armed man suspected of stabbing the woman at an Irvine bus stop.

A nurse who was driving by stopped and administered aid to the bleeding woman until paramedics arrived, according to Henry Sokol, the Orange County Transit District driver.

“Everybody was great--the passengers on the bus, the people on their way (along the street). Anyone with any ability to help, they stopped,” Sokol said.

The suspect, according to Irvine police, is an escaped convict from Oregon, and the woman waiting at the bus stop is the suspect’s estranged wife, a Tustin resident.

When police arrived at the scene, they found the bus driver and two passengers holding down Larry Gene Nelson, 34, an escapee from the state penitentiary in Salem, Ore. He had been serving time for aggravated assault and had escaped in 1984, Irvine Police Lt. Sam Allevato said.

The stabbing victim, identified as Carlotta Funes, 37, was listed in serious condition Tuesday night at Fountain Valley Regional Hospital. Allevato said Funes is employed in Irvine as a housekeeper and baby sitter and was waiting for a bus to go home when the attack occurred shortly after 5 p.m.

Witnesses aboard the bus told police that as they pulled up to the bus stop on Culver Drive, north of the San Diego Freeway, they saw a man holding a knife to the victim’s neck. “As she screamed for help, she was stabbed numerous times in the head, chest and abdomen,” Allevato said. The driver and two male passengers “came to her aid and held the suspect until the police arrived,” he said.

Allevato identified the passengers as Douglas Domingo, 32, of Irvine, a member of the academic staff at UC Irvine, and Bunnie Bell, 32, of Irvine, who is a maintenance supervisor at the university.

The driver, who has worked for OCTD for nearly five years, had a more detailed account of the encounter.

In a telephone interview, Sokol said he had just let off some riders when he noticed a man and a woman together at the bus stop.

“I was going to let them on, but the man waved me off,” Sokol said. He said he started moving the bus forward, but he heard the woman yell “Help!” and “Don’t go!”

“That’s when I stopped again,” he said. As Sokol got off the bus to see what the problem was, he said, “one of the passengers was saying, ‘He’s got a knife, oh no!’ ”

Sokol, seeing that the man was holding the knife to the woman’s throat, got back on the bus and radioed his headquarters, so that the OCTD could alert Irvine police. Then he got off the bus again to help the woman, he said.

“But by this time there were two other passengers approaching (the suspect). They’re the ones who did all the work,” Sokol said. As the two passengers got nearer, Sokol heard the man warn them to come no closer.

“At this time, I noticed she had some blood on her face, so I got back on the radio and told them to get the paramedics,” Sokol said.

By the time he got off the bus again, the man was in a nearby ditch, and the two passengers were wrestling him to the ground, the driver said. The passengers managed to hold the man down, Sokol said, but he appeared to be trying to cut his own throat with the knife. Sokol got on the man’s chest and pulled the hand holding the knife away from his throat, enabling the two passengers to wrench the weapon his hand, he said.

Leaving the man with the two passengers, Sokol went to check on the injured woman. She was being cared for by a nurse who had been driving by and stopped when she saw the commotion, he said.

“She (the nurse) spent a lot of time with the victim. She was putting packs of stuff, such as gauze, all around her throat area,” Sokol said.

Irvine police lauded the Sokol and the passengers for their involvement.

“For these two guys and the driver to get out and restrain a man wielding a knife . . . it was very heroic,” Allevato said.

Sokol, 39, of San Dimas gave all the credit to his passengers. He has heard of people who witness crimes and don’t want to get involved, he said, but they weren’t on his bus or near the stabbing Tuesday.

“Everybody was real human about it,” Sokol said. “There are real human beings out there.”