An Oklahoma school bus driver was arrested after ignoring students’ requests to let them off to their parents last Friday.
The driver, identified as 68-year-old Thomas Young, was taking students from Broken Arrow Public Schools home but was running behind, Fox 23 reported.
A six-minute video posted by Fox 23 reporter Spencer Humphrey shows the driver telling the kids he is pulling over the bus in the Tulsa suburb. At the same time, students could be heard asking him to let them off.
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“I run my bus a certain way,” the driver said. “I don’t care what the other bus drivers do. You obey me.”
“Can I get off, sir?” a student asked.
“No,” he responded before instructing the students to sit quietly. “I don’t care if your mom’s there. Makes no difference to me. You’re not going with your mom.”
One of the students approaches him and asks him to let him out of the vehicle. The driver refused. The students started to get frustrated, and one yelled that they had been inside for 40 minutes.
“I don’t care,” the driver said. “Sit down. I’m not budging.” He said the students weren’t listening to him.
The student began screaming, wailing, and banging on the door: “I don’t care if they get violent and break the windows,” the driver continued.
Police said the bus was moving slowly, and bystanders noticed students hopping from the exits. Young allegedly decided to pull into the parking lot, and more kids got off, per KJRH.
According to the reports, Young was charged with child abuse and kidnapping and terminated from his job. A spokesperson for the school district told Fox 23 that he worked with them for a year. Local authorities said that Young put the children in a dangerous situation.
“Holding the kids against their will, and the fact that those children were jumping from the school bus while he continued to drive eastbound, even at a slow speed, endangered them and put them in a dangerous situation,” Captain Josh McCoy said, per the outlet.
Last month, a substitute bus driver in Mississippi faced disciplinary action after parents said the driver locked the doors and didn’t let the students off for more than half an hour on a hot day. A similar situation happened earlier this year after a driver in Georgia got into a spat with parents after refusing to let some kids leave the bus. The driver was suspended.
