Syracuse, NY - It was shaping up to be an uneventful night for veteran Centro bus driver Mike Walsh when he took the wheel for the 7:15 p.m. run down South Salina Street April 13, 2009. “It was a nice night,” Walsh recalled. “I picked up the usual people, took them home.” Gunfire quickly turned that routine into a...
Veteran Centro bus driver Mike Walsh and his passengers witnessed a fatal shootout among two Syracuse detectives and an armed parolee April 13, 2009.Syracuse, NY - It was shaping up to be an uneventful night for veteran Centro bus driver Mike Walsh when he took the wheel for the 7:15 p.m. run down South Salina Street April 13, 2009.
“It was a nice night,” Walsh recalled. “I picked up the usual people, took them home.”
Gunfire quickly turned that routine into a harrowing ride for about 12 people on board. A security video taken from Walsh’s passing bus captured a shootout between Syracuse police and a parolee. Detectives Edward Falkowski and Richard Curran were injured; the parolee, James Tyson, was killed. Walsh was on vacation when the video was released last week after the officers were honored at City Hall. He agreed to an interview when he returned.
This is Walsh’s version of what happened:
He saw flashing police lights and a squad car when the bus reached Belle Street. In the next block, police had pulled over a car into the parking lot of Colonial Laundromat.
Within seconds, the cops were fighting with the driver. It reminded Walsh of the scuffles on the television show, “Cops.” He reached down to his radio to alert dispatch.
Suddenly, shots rang out. First, only a couple. Then a barrage.
“Shots fired!” Walsh told dispatch, giving his location.
Behind him, passengers were “freaking out.”
“Oh my God! Oh my God!” one passenger yelled.
He didn’t dare take his eyes off the road.
The bus reached a red light where Ballantyine and Walrath roads meet at South Salina Street.
More shots. All told, the police fired 19 times; Tyson returned fire from his .357 Magnum handgun, a grand jury determined later.
At the time, Walsh’s only mission was to get his passengers out of harm’s way.
He stopped the bus momentarily, then stepped on the gas. The Centro bus drove through the red light and swerved around a stopped car.
“I was just trying to get out of Dodge,” Walsh said. “I probably shouldn’t have run the red light, but it seemed like the best thing to do.”
No one on the bus was injured. But Walsh, who is the brother of Onondaga County Sheriff Kevin Walsh, said it was one of his closest scrapes in 34 years with Centro.
Walsh, 61, of Baldwinsville, said he’s had folks shoot BB guns at buses. He remembers one passenger who dove out an emergency exit after claiming another passenger was wielding a handgun. None was seen. Then there was the guy in the late 1970s who pulled out a butcher knife when asked to pay his fare.
“He got off without paying,” Walsh recalled.
But Walsh vouched for most of his passengers, saying most are “pretty good.”
Walsh, an Air Force veteran who served in Vietnam, said April 13, 2009 was the closest he’s ever been to getting shot at. He recalls a rocket that exploded near his encampment in Vietnam in 1969, but said he never faced gunfire as such close range.
“I guess it just didn’t really register,” Walsh said about the danger last year. “I was more interested in keeping my passengers safe, getting them out of there.”
Read previous coverage of this story.