CNN - Boy dies after hijacking school bus

Boy dies after hijacking school bus

Driver shot, wounded

May 14, 1996
Web posted at: 1:45 p.m. EDT

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah (CNN) -- A 15-year-old boy -- described as a "good kid who's had some personal tragedies in his life" -- shot a bus driver and then led authorities on a high-speed chase that ended when he crashed the bus into a house, apparently killing himself.

There were no others on the bus when it crashed, officials said. The bus driver was treated at a hospital for a minor wound in the leg.

Salt Lake County Sheriff Aaron Kennard said half of the 50-foot-long bus was embedded in the wood-frame home.

Kennard had said earlier that two of the boy's close friends had recently died and "he had apparently had a hard time coping with that." He said the boy, a middle school student, had no known juvenile crime record.

Police had surrounded the area for three hours as they tried to find out whether the boy was in the house or still in the bus. Tear gas fired into the house and attempts to talk to the boy had gotten no response.

Kennard said SWAT team members finally broke out windows on the bus and found the boy dead in the driver's seat, secured by a seat belt.

An eyewitness, Sam Mallory, said the incident started when the boy walked up to the woman bus driver as she was making her first stop of the day about 7:15 a.m. in a residential neighborhood.

He was wearing a cowboy hat and gun -- said to be a 357 magnum pistol -- in a holster, said another witness. When the school bus driver told the boy to give her the gun, said the witness, he told her to get off the bus.

"She laughed," said Mallory," and said, 'Big joke.' That's when he pulled out the gun and shot her." The youth helped the bus driver off the bus and then drove off, Mallory said.

A boy who also had been waiting for the bus said he and about 15 other children fled when the boy fired the shot.

Mallory said he knew the boy and that the youth had given no indication that he was upset or had planned to take the bus.

After a chase down city streets, the boy crashed the bus into the house of a retired sheriff's deputy, said a Salt Lake County Sheriff's spokesman, Sgt. Jim Potter.

Potter said that after bus crashed into the house, the man who lived there came out carrying a gun. Deputies, not knowing who he was, wrestled him to the ground. Authorities said the man suffered a shoulder injury, but otherwise, both he and his wife got out of the house safely.

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Boy dies after hijacking school bus

Driver shot, wounded

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