Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 5, 1990 TAG: 9003052122
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
State police said the windshield of the coach had been damaged a few minutes earlier by a concrete block dropped on the vehicle from an overpass in Christiansburg.
A threat that a bomb was on the bus was received by Roanoke police shortly before 11 p.m. Saturday, according to Trooper Roy Bolen.
Soon afterward, state police stopped the bus off Exit 34 along Interstate 81 near Radford and evacuated all the passengers.
Bolen said a Montgomery County school bus was brought for the passengers to wait in while authorities searched the Greyhound. Montgomery deputies and Radford police assisted in the search.
About 4 a.m., after authorities and a state police bomb-sniffing dog from Appomattox had found no explosives, the passengers were returned to the bus.
The bomb threat and damaged windshield came at the end of the second day of a national strike against Greyhound Lines Inc. by the Amalgamated Council of Greyhound Local Unions.
Nationally, some strikers stayed off the picket line Sunday in memory of a co-worker killed in Redding, Calif., while picketing.
Union member Robert Waterhouse, 59, was crushed Saturday against a building by a bus driven by a temporary replacement driver. Waterhouse died Saturday.
Greyhound Chairman Fred G. Currey said he was told the driver was trying to maneuver around a pickup truck driven by a striker.
The replacement driver, Theodore Graham, left the scene. He told investigators later that he hadn't realized he'd hit anyone, according to a statement released Sunday by the Redding Police Department.
Pickets trying to slow the bus shouted at the driver and hit the bus with their signs as it pulled away from the terminal, and the bus had a minor collision with a striker's pickup truck on the way out, police said.
Graham later flagged down a highway patrol car to report the crash and was taken in for questioning about the striker's death, police said. No charges were filed, and police referred the case to the District Attorney for a final determination.
"We don't believe that he intentionally ran over this person," Redding police investigator John Severson said Saturday.
The victim was preparing to retire this year, said his wife, Dorie Waterhouse.
In Roanoke, about a dozen strikers were on the picket line Sunday night when a bus pulled into the Roanoke terminal.
The strikers were angered by the way the bus had been driven across the picket line. Most buses, they said, have edged across the line and slowly passed by the strikers.
This driver, however, accelerated as he approached the picket line and honked the horn as he pulled into the terminal. Union members pounded the bus with their fists as it passed and heckled the driver as he got off the bus.
"You want to know why that guy in California got killed? That's the reason right there," said Tommy Mullins, pointing at the bus after it had passed.
Mullins, international vice president for the Amalgamated Council of Greyhound Local Unions, was in Roanoke to support the strikers. He lives in Roanoke and is on leave while he is working for the union.
"If any of these men or women had fallen down in front of the bus, he would have crushed them. He never would have seen them," he said of the replacement driver.
of this article are from Associated Press reports.
by CNB