A BUS driver has told the Daniel Morcombe murder trial he was following orders when he didn’t stop for a boy matching Daniel’s description who tried to flag him down.
Daniel, 13, vanished while waiting for a bus at the Kiel Mountain Road overpass at Woombye on the Sunshine Coast on December 7, 2003.
Suncoast bus driver Ross Edmonds told the court that his bus broke down shortly before the overpass that afternoon.
Mr Edmonds said duty controller Jeff Norman came to him with another driver and two new buses.
“Jeff told me, he said: ‘you just go direct to Maroochydore, we’ll do the pick-ups’,” he said.
Mr Edmonds said he saw a “young chap” in a red shirt and another “chap” under the overpass.
The court has heard Daniel was wearing a red T-shirt when he disappeared and several witnesses have described seeing a man standing near him under the overpass.
“He (the boy) lifted his finger ... and I pointed to him (to indicate) there was another bus coming,” Mr Edmonds said.
The driver added that he told Mr Norman via radio there was someone waiting under the overpass and continued on.
“Jeff told me he would pick anyone up that was around,” he said.
Mr Norman earlier told the court his bus followed within two minutes of Mr Edmonds’ but when he passed the overpass he saw no one.
Meanwhile, a passenger on Mr Edmonds’ bus told the court she argued with the driver about his failure to pick up the boy.
Katherine Bird told the court she’d told the driver he should have stopped and they had an argument.
The driver told her she would be thrown off the bus if she didn’t sit down, she said.
In another testimony, a Gympie woman has told of seeing a child with white sneakers standing on Nambour Connection Rd being bashed in the back of a blue car minutes later.
Woombye resident Belinda Russell said a blue 80s model case sped past her a few minutes after she saw the boy.
She said she saw a “fairly young-looking boy with black hair” wearing a red T-shirt and “fairly white shoes” in the shadow of the Kiel Mountain Road overpass about 12.30pm to 1pm.
Ms Russell said she saw the boy raise his hand to hail a blue Sunbus travelling in front of her family but the bus drove past.
She said a sky blue sun-faded four-door sedan later pulled sharply in front of her and was moving around violently.
“I could see a person which I thought was male in the back seat,” she said.
“He was punching and moving violently in the back of the seat, slightly to the right.”
Ms Russell said it was like he was sitting on top of someone because he was sitting quite high in the back seat.
She said she tried to write down the registration number on her shopping list but her pen malfunctioned and the scrap of paper had since been thrown out.
Brett Peter Cowan, 44, has pleaded not guilty to murder, indecent treatment of a child and interfering with a corpse.
Yesterday: ‘Jumping’ tarpaulin in car linked to Daniel Morcombe disappearance
The trial in Brisbane Supreme Court continues.
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