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Possibly armed man on Greyhound bus arrested near Wisconsin-Illinois border

40 passengers safely removed from bus
Posted at 10:54 PM, Jan 12, 2018
and last updated 2018-01-13 10:21:48-05

A disorderly man who may have been carrying a gun on a Greyhound bus traveling from Milwaukee to Chicago was taken into custody Friday night in what may have been a hostage situation. 

Authorities received reports of the possibly armed subject on the bus at around 9:50 p.m. and began pursuing the bus in Wisconsin, crossing into Illinois and concluding the pursuit at the I-94 eastbound exit ramp to Illinois Route 173 near Wadsworth, IL. 

Around 40 passengers were removed from the bus without any injuries reported, according to the Illinois State Police. 

The passengers were initially taken to Gurnee before being transported to their final destination in Chicago. 

Passenger Patrick Dowd told TODAY'S TMJ4 the man yelled that he had a gun, threatened to kill them all and pulled something out of his pocket. That's when several of the passengers started calling 911.

“He was just asking crazy, that’s basically what it boiled down to. We tried to get him to calm down, there was 4 or 5 people telling him to sit back down … he refused to,” Dowd said. 

The incident shut down all southbound lanes of I-94. 

Police initially said they were responding to a possible hostage situation, but further details were not released about what happened on the bus.