Investigators have revealed that Rigor De Padua, the Filipino expatriate who stole a bus on the morning of Nov.11, had displayed threatening behavior to a work colleague and attacked his manager's car with a hammer before making the ill-fated bus journey which resulted in the deaths of three people. Although no clear motive has yet been established why De Padua stole the vehicle and drove it up a Jeddah highway in the wrong direction, investigations have revealed that the detained man would appear to have suffered an “emotional shock” prior to the incident. Police have been hearing testimonies over the last few days from witnesses and friends and acquaintances of De Padua, one of whom reported that the accused had violently banged on his locked door at work using a hammer, causing him considerable alarm. When he refused to open the door, De Padua proceeded to the manager's office which he tried to enter by force, and then went on to attack the manager's car, smashing it with the iron hammer. Only then did De Padua take control of the bus which was parked in the street outside his place of work, its Sudanese driver absent from the wheel for prayer, and set off while ignoring the pleas of five passengers to let them off. The passengers managed to jump from the bus, leading one of them to be taken to hospital for injuries. The accused then proceeded to drive the bus at high speed in the wrong direction along a busy highway, leading to a head-on collision with another vehicle and the deaths of the three Saudi nationals inside. De Padua, 32-year-old Filipino expatriate, had arrived in the Kingdom only weeks before the incident.
