diff --git a/CHANGES.txt b/CHANGES.txt
index ceccc71f6e..1d1b4fddb0 100644
--- a/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/CHANGES.txt
@@ -9,6 +9,8 @@
    (CASSANDRA-4088)
  * relax path length requirement for sstable files when upgrading on 
    non-Windows platforms (CASSANDRA-4110)
+ * fix terminination of the stress.java when errors were encountered
+   (CASSANDRA-4128)
 
 
 1.1-beta2
diff --git a/tools/stress/src/org/apache/cassandra/stress/Stress.java b/tools/stress/src/org/apache/cassandra/stress/Stress.java
index 36f0410daa..c5e65f8f6e 100644
--- a/tools/stress/src/org/apache/cassandra/stress/Stress.java
+++ b/tools/stress/src/org/apache/cassandra/stress/Stress.java
@@ -88,7 +88,7 @@ public final class Stress
         }
         else
         {
-            new StressAction(session, outStream).run();
+            new StressAction(session, outStream).start();
         }
     }
 
diff --git a/tools/stress/src/org/apache/cassandra/stress/StressAction.java b/tools/stress/src/org/apache/cassandra/stress/StressAction.java
index 8d6a0f58a5..d175170d99 100644
--- a/tools/stress/src/org/apache/cassandra/stress/StressAction.java
+++ b/tools/stress/src/org/apache/cassandra/stress/StressAction.java
@@ -137,6 +137,9 @@ public class StressAction extends Thread
             }
         }
 
+        if (producer.isAlive())
+            producer.interrupt(); // if producer is still alive it means that we had errors in the consumers
+
         // marking an end of the output to the client
         output.println("END");
     }
@@ -161,7 +164,8 @@ public class StressAction extends Thread
                 }
                 catch (InterruptedException e)
                 {
-                    System.err.println("Producer error - " + e.getMessage());
+                    if (e.getMessage() != null)
+                        System.err.println("Producer error - " + e.getMessage());
                     return;
                 }
             }