A Colorado school bus driver is in hot water after he dumped 40 elementary-aged kids on the side of the road and took off — with students claiming he bragged about owning guns and threatened “consequences” if they didn’t shut up.
The fiasco went down Monday evening in Castle Rock — about 30 miles south of Denver — when kids from Clear Sky Elementary School climbed on their bus at the end of the day to find a substitute driver behind the wheel.
Right away, students say something felt wrong.
“He wouldn’t let us leave the school until we stopped talking,” 10-year-old Caitlyn Zavadil told 9News, explaining they sat in the parking lot before he pulled out well behind schedule.
“He finally left, and he was skipping all the kids’ stops, and when I say all the kids, I mean all the kids,” the girl said. “And we felt like when he was driving and missing our stops, like we were getting kidnapped.”
And all the while, the driver became more and more hostile.
“He was threatening us, saying that the used to be in the army and that he had guns. And that if we do anything wrong there’ll be consequences,” Zavadil told KDVR.
After blasting past the usual drop-offs, the driver pulled over at a busy intersection and demanded the kids get out of the bus. So they did, fleeing up the street before the driver sped off and left them as the night grew dark and cold.
The sight of dozens of frightened school children running amok was alarming to parents.
“It felt as if there was an active shooter on that bus the way these children were just running from it, running out of it, running through traffic, scattering all over the place,” said parent Savanna Keisling, who arrived shortly after to rescue her daughter.
She then noticed Zavadil and her younger sister crying — the girls stranded at least two miles from their house without phones and no idea how to get back — and offered to take them home.
“Several kids were crying and being hysterical because their stops were missed and they didn’t know what was going on,” parent Tony Martin, whose daughter was also returned home by a classmate’s parents, told KDVR.
“When she got home she was very hysterical, traumatized. Uncontrollably crying because she said ‘I felt like I was being kidnapped,’” Martin said.
Other parents told the outlet their kids came home terrified, including one who was scared the bus driver was going to break into their house and shoot them.
The Douglas County School District said the bus driver has been placed on leave while the Castle Rock Police Department investigates the situation.
“We are in contact with the families of the 40 students who were dropped off yesterday at a different area than their regular bus stop after school. This is incredibly concerning as the safety of our students is always our priority,” the school district said in a statement.