sword scares RTD Bus riders

In this article there is a man who brings a sword onto a rtd bus and is dressed in metal armor. Passengers on the bus called police. It turned out that the man was only going to a video game convention. Should these people have called the police, or should thay have just talked to the man and cleared everything up.If you were in this situation what would you have done? Should these people been as scared as they were?