Kids End School Bus Hijacking By ‘Asking Suspect Lots Of Questions’

A group of kids helped to end a school bus hijacking by asking the hijacker lots of questions. The incident, which took place in South Carolina on Thursday, May 6, saw 23-year-old Fort Jackson military trainee Jovan Collazo board the bus and then point a rifle at the driver while demanding he drives Collazo to the next town. At the same time, he ordered all 18 students to the front of the bus, which ended up being a pretty big mistake.

1. Collazo became “frustrated” with the kids’ questioning. Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott said during a press conference that the kids didn’t seem all that upset about what was going on and instead began bombarding Collazo with so many questions that it overwhelmed him. “The kids were asking questions. ‘Are you gonna hurt us?’ ‘Are you a soldier?’ ‘Are you a bus driver?’ So they were being kids, they were being kids,” Lott said. “I think that added to the frustration that he had.”
2. He let everyone off the bus six minutes later. Unable to handle the constant barrage of questioning from the kids, Collazo let everyone off the bus six minutes after he boarded it before eventually getting off himself a few minutes later after driving a short distance. “There was six minutes, six minutes, they were traumatized. Six complete minutes that the bad guy was on the bus with a gun,” Lott said.
3. Colazzo was arrested and charged soon after. He’s facing 19 counts of hijacking, carjacking, and armed robbery charges among others. Brigadier General Milford Beagle Jr, the Fort Jackson base commander, said he believed Colazzo committed the crime because he was homesick, leading him to scale the fence at the base and run through the woods before attempting to hijack the bus. “As he left the bus, one thing he was trying to do… was trying to acquire new clothes and a ride, which we assume would have been to a bus station, the airport, train station in order to make it home,” he said as per NBC News. “There is nothing that leads us to believe – through his counseling, through anything in his screening records coming in – that this had anything to do with harming others, harming himself.”
4. Lott said the bus driver deserves praise for staying calm and collected. “I’ll give the bus driver credit. He kept his cool. He didn’t overreact. He didn’t get excited. He kept his cool enough that kept the situation calm,” he said. “And I will tell you his main concern was the safety of those kids.”