The Smarmy Carny

The kids on the bus go 'Bang! Bang! Bang!'

Think back . . . What were you doing in 5th grade? Have you conjured up any memories? Was one of them "hijacking my school bus?" No? Good.

Pennsylvania state police reported yesterday that an 11-year-old boy pulled a knife and tried to hijack his school bus along with three of his friends. Yep, you read it correctly . . . eleven years old.

From the information I collected from multiple news stories, three 11-year-old boys and a 10-year-old girl plotted to hijack their school bus and drive it to Nevada. The leader pulled a knife and held it up to the neck of one of the other accomplices, and the accomplice pretended to be hurt. He demanded that the bus driver pull the school bus over and get out. The bus driver, Janet McQuown, pulled the bus over and asked the boy (without raising her voice) to give her the knife. After several requests, he gave up the knife. She instructed the four kids to go sit still and be quiet until they reached school twenty minutes later. By that point, she had radioed in and school administration was waiting for the children. Two of the boys were given to juvenile authorities, and the other two went home with their parents.

I can only assume that they will be grounded from their Playstation for a week.

I got a laugh out of a particular line in one news story:

As to why the children gave up so easily, McQuown said she wasn't sure.
"Apparently, they did not have a Plan B."

As pitiful as this story is, it just cracks me up because children can be so insightful. Why did they think they could actually hijack their school bus and drive it to Nevada? Let's think about this . . .

1. What makes an 11-year-old think that he could force a 52-year-old bus driver to leave a bus full of children with a kid wielding a knife? Of all types of people, bus drivers are some of the toughest. I know my bus driver could still beat me up today, and she's gotta be 60 or so by now, if not older. Dealing with screaming children twice every school day (four times if you count elementary and high school) will make a person hardcore! Let's just assume they were able to get the bus driver off of the bus and continue on with the list of problems . . .
2. I don't know about buses these days, but when I graduated, they all still had manual transmission. I know 30-year-olds who can't drive stick, and I doubt those four 5th graders could, either.
3. One article noted that they couldn't even reach the accellerator and brake pedals and see out of the windshield at the same time. That could be a possible obstacle.
4. Punxsutawney: Northeast. Nevada: Southeast. Over 2200 miles. 34 hours. I guess that's why there were four of them, so they could drive in shifts and drive the 34 hours straight.
5. Buses aren't exactly the most gas-efficient vehicles on the road. I certainly don't think they can get over 2000 miles per tank. This would require a gas stop. Several of them, really. I'm assuming they would have stolen all of the kids' lunch money to pay for the gas. Let's assume none of the kids brought their lunch, but they all brought $2. That would be $80 or so. If the bus gets 20 miles per gallon, that would be about 110 gallons of gas. If they could buy gas at an average of $0.72/gallon, they could pull it off.
6. Police, roadblocks, etc. . . . it wouldn't be tough for police to track down a busload of children driven by a child, would it? Once found, it really wouldn't be difficult to keep close tabs on them, O.J. style.

Oh well . . . what are you going to do? Felons grow up so fast these days.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 22nd, 2005 at 22:12 by Novac and is filed under All, Children.   You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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