After the injured Freedom Riders reached the hospital in Anniston, they were treated at the urging of an FBI agent while a growing and increasingly menacing crowd gathered outside, with some Klansmen threatening to burn the building down. The superintendent ordered the Riders to leave as soon as possible, but no local police or state troopers would transport them, so Joe Perkins called Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth in Birmingham, who recruited deacons to drive eight cars to Anniston. With police holding back a jeering crowd outside the hospital and the deacons openly displaying weapons, the Riders entered the cars and were driven back to Birmingham as evening fell, uncertain about their friends from the Trailways bus. After the two attacks in Anniston, the Freedom Riders from both buses were reunited Sunday evening at Rev. Shuttlesworth's Bethel Baptist Church parsonage, where they slept there or in volunteers' homes. On Monday morning, they voted to complete the Ride and went to the bus station, but bus drivers refused to drive them. After phone calls throughout the day among Shuttlesworth, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, and Governor John Patterson's office, it became clear that the Ride could not safely continue because no law enforcement in the state would provide safe passage. The Riders were then forced to leave by air that evening. At the airport they encountered a mob outside, taunts from police and passengers inside, and refusal of food by airport staff. After several bomb threats delayed departure, Robert Kennedy's special representative John Siegenthaler arrived from Washington and took control of the situation. The plane carrying the Riders finally left the runway at 10:38 p.m. and landed in New Orleans an hour later, and the Ride appeared to be over.