The man charged with murder and kidnapping after a bus was hihacked in Atlanta on Tuesday was interviewed by local media about having witnessed a shooting mere hours earlier.
Joseph Grier, 39, spoke to NBC affiliate WXIA of Atlanta on Tuesday afternoon at the scene of a shooting at Peachtree Center Mall, where a gunman shot three people before he was shot and wounded by a police officer.
Grier, wearing a gray shirt, recounted seeing the gunman get into a confrontation with someone before shots rang out.
“So I’m leaving out of the thing,” Grier said, pointing to the mall. “So I see the shooter, I guess, you know what I’m saying.”
“He ran off ... and I guess, I don’t know if he pulled a gun or what he did. I was scared because I don’t have a gun, I can’t have one,” Grier said.
In the interview, Grier appeared to ramble, and he told reporters that he has bipolar disorder, that he had been off his medication for two weeks and that he was experiencing a manic episode. He also said that he was armed with knives and that he had previously been in jail.
“Right now I'm in an extreme mode,” he told reporters.
He was arrested hours later wearing the same shirt in his mug shot. He is accused of hijacking a Gwinnett County Transit bus in Atlanta with 17 people on board, including the driver, officials said.
Grier boarded the bus at 4:20 p.m. and got into an argument with a male passenger that escalated into a fight, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said in a statement.
The passenger pulled out a gun, which Grier took and began to threaten passengers with, officials said. He shot the passenger and ordered the bus driver to flee the scene, the GBI alleged.
A law enforcement chase was launched as the bus drove into Gwinnett County, then east into DeKalb County. During the pursuit, the bus hit several police vehicles, and its tires were flattened.
Ultimately, a Georgia State Patrol trooper fired his patrol rifle into the engine compartment of the bus to cause it to malfunction and stop running, the GBI said.
The pursuit ended on Hugh Howell Road in Stone Mountain, and Grier was arrested without further incident.
The bus passenger died at a hospital. Atlanta police identified him Wednesday as Earnest Byrd Jr., 58.
The bus driver was also taken to a hospital for treatment. No further injuries were reported, Atlanta police said.
Grier, of Stone Mountain, was booked into the Fulton County Jail on Wednesday morning on 14 counts of kidnapping, 14 counts of aggravated assault, one count of murder, one count of hijacking a motor vehicle, one count of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and one count of possession of a knife or firearm during commission of a certain felony, police said.
It was not immediately clear whether he has an attorney.
Atlanta police and the GBI are investigating.
Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum said at a news conference Tuesday that "we don’t know yet" why the bus was hijacked.
He described Grier as a felon who has been arrested 19 times.
Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens likened the chase to something “like the movies,” adding, “I think mental health is going to play a role in some of this, but you’re talking about too many guns in the hands of individuals that should not have guns.”
Felicia Kinsey, Byrd's fiancée, told NBC News on Wednesday that Byrd was “the most amazing man I’ve ever known.”
She said she had his location on her phone and spent Tuesday afternoon watching his location go around in circles during the hijacking. She kept trying to call him, to no avail.
Kinsey remembered Byrd was a “big brother” to everyone.
“I just know he stood up to that man on the bus,” she said.
She said she and Byrd had grown up next to each other in North Carolina and moved to Atlanta because Kinsey wanted to live there. She said that Byrd doesn’t have any family in the area and that his funeral will be in New York.