Metrobus passenger helps nab escaped prisoner

The call came into 911 -- a Metrobus passenger had spotted someone who looked like Wossen Assaye. The bank robbery suspect had escaped from a hospital in Fairfax.

His face had been plastered all over the media. Police sources say the passenger on the M6 bus line was looking out the window when he saw Assaye walking by a gas station at Pennsylvania Avenue and Minnesota Avenue in Southeast.

D.C. officers quickly moved in, capturing him around 11:30 a.m. as he came out of an alley.

"Next thing we know, the police had him," said Ruthie Dixon Bradford who works at a nearby hair salon. "They came from everywhere, threw him up against the car. He didn't say anything. He didn't resist arrest. Nothing."

It appears that Assaye drove to D.C. where he ditched a Hyundai Elantra that police say was carjacked from the Annandale area Tuesday morning. The car was found west of the Sousa Bridge near a Harris Teeter store on Pennsylvania Avenue. It is a short distance away from where the escaped prisoner was captured.

Assaye reportedly still had his hospital gown and shackles on.

"I'm glad. They did their job," said a man waiting near the Metro bus stop. "What they had to do was catch the man before someone else got hurt."

Witnesses say police put Assaye into a squad car as a helicopter hovered overhead. He was later turned over to U.S. marshals.

It is still unclear if Assaye had any help.

"It was crazy," said Dixon Bradford. "We just saw all the police and helicopter and we were like what's going on?"

Metro is going over bus surveillance video to see if Assaye boarded one near the Harris Teeter before getting off two stops later.

The transit agency has nine different bus lines that run along the route. Any video Metro finds of him will be turned over to the FBI.