STA, 5 April 2019 - A 48-year-old man hijacked a bus in Ljubljana last night, but died after losing consciousness while he was being arrested by the police despite attempts at resuscitating him, the police said.
According to media reports, the driver and the passengers have not been injured in the incident.
An updated version of this story can be found here
Citing the boss of the Ljubljana public transportation company LPP, Peter Horvat, the newspaper Delo reported that shortly before 9 PM last night a man boarded a bus No 6B headed for Dolgi Most in the south-west of Ljubljana.
Threatening with a screwdriver, he forced the driver to divert the bus in the direction of the Ljubljana ring road. He threatened to kill him.
The driver drove through a red light on purpose to alert the police. One of the passengers also managed to call the police.
The police confirmed the incident, identifying the man as a 48-year-old Kranj resident.
They said that several police patrol cars intervened, managing to stop the bus in Barjanska Street before it entered the Ljubljana ring road.
Applying coercive measures, they managed to get the man out of the bus and handcuffed him. During the procedure he started losing his consciousness.
Despite being given emergency aid by the police and subsequent attempts by paramedics to resuscitate him, he died on the spot.
More information will follow at a press conference at the Ljubljana Police Department at 11 AM today.
The news web site Siol cited a man claiming to be the father of the female passenger who called the police. He described the suspect as a fair haired man wearing dark clothes.
Entering at the Drama bus stop, he pulled out a screwdriver two stops later threatening the driver and demanding of him to drive the bus to the Barje service station.
The man talking to Siol also said that the suspect threatened to kill everyone on the bus claiming he had a gun, but it later turned out he did not have one. He says there six passengers on the bus at the time.
The traffic information centre reported that the south section of the Ljubljana ring road was closed at the Ljubljana Centre slip road.
