KEY POINTS
- Joshua Bagley and the victim were the only passengers on the bus
- Bagley was captured on surveillance video strangling the woman
- Cops were on the lookout for Bagley until he was arrested Tuesday
An Arizona man was arrested for allegedly strangling a woman to death on a Phoenix bus.
Joshua Bagley, 26, was the primary suspect in the case after Diane Craig, 41, was found unresponsive on a bus Friday morning. The Phoenix Police Department was on the lookout for Bagley and arrested him Tuesday, according to the New York Post.
Craig was found Friday by a Valley Metro bus driver at the back of a bus near 27th Avenue and Baseline Road. She was not breathing and had bag straps twisted around her neck, according to azfamily.com.
Officers were called to the scene, and Craig was rushed to the hospital but she died from “internal decapitation.”
Bagley and Craig were the only passengers inside the bus when the incident took place. It is unclear whether they knew each other prior to the strangulation.
Surveillance footage captured them sitting near each other in the back before Bagley was filmed strangling Craig with bag straps, shoving her to the ground and stealing some of her things.
The driver on the bus heard a noise coming from the back of the bus but reportedly did not think much of it at the time.
After moving to the front of the bus, Bagley eventually got off outside a QuikTrip, the bus driver told cops.
Police spent days looking for Bagley and arrested him after receiving a tip about a suspicious person.
“After several days and tireless efforts that were a collaborative partnership between several units in the police department and the community, the suspect in this case, Bagley, was taken into custody this afternoon in the area of 27th Avenue and Indian School Road,” the Phoenix Police Department wrote on Facebook.
Bagley has previously had run-ins with the law and was arrested on two separate occasions in the last two months.
Charges against him in the case of Craig’s death were pending as of Wednesday.
Craig’s cousins, Roshuanda Boss and Shontae Vinson, spoke about the victim to 12 News following her death.
“Diane was a wonderful person. She was so full of life,” Boss told the outlet.
“Diane is her name but that’s Bubbles," Vinson added. "That’s what we call her, that’s Bubbles. She was like the life of the room."
Vinson told the outlet that Bagley “robbed” their family and said, “She definitely did not deserve this. Our family is hurting.”
Representative image Photo: Credit: Pixabay / makotochocho
