A Bus Full of Kindergarteners Stopped an Armed Hijacker Because They Wouldn't Stop Asking Him Questions
Good Morning America — A South Carolina school bus driver who kept his cool during an armed hijacking hailed all 18 children the real heroes of the high-pressure encounter.
Kenneth Corbin spoke exclusively to “Good Morning America” Monday about how he was able to hold off the gunman and what the students said to the man that helped keep them safe for six minutes.
“The kids were the ones that actually got the gentleman off of the bus and they pretty much had my back as much as my concerns were with them,” Corbin explained. “At the end when they started questioning him, it seemed to have frustrated him because his main objective were to get to the next town, but I think we were only on the road about four miles and he just got frustrated with the questions and just told me to stop the bus and get off. All y’all get off now.”
Jovan Collazo got on a South Carolina school bus armed with a rifle, apparently trying to get to a town about 20 miles from Fort Jackson, where he was in training with the Army. But he didn't make it more than a few miles before he got fed up with the kindergarteners asking him questions and just gave up the whole plan.
Shoutout to these kids and certainly to this bus driver. Kenneth Corbin did everything he was supposed to and then turned it over to the kids out of the bullpen and let them come in and close it out. All they had to do was normal 5-year-old shit and this psycho couldn't take it anymore. I guess a barrage of questions from elementary schoolers wasn't on his pre-hijacking checklist.
The students, according to Corbin, asked if the man was a soldier to which he "hesitantly answered -- 'yes.'"
"They asked him, 'why are you doing this?' He never did have an answer for this one. They asked, was he going to hurt them? He said 'no.' They asked, 'are you going to hurt our bus driver?' He said, 'no. I'm going to put you off the bus,'" Corbin recalled. "He sensed more questions coming and I guess something clicked in his mind and he said, 'enough is enough already,' and he told me to 'stop the bus, and just get off.'"
However long this guy is going to spend in prison — he's facing 19 counts of kidnapping among other charges — has to sting a little bit more knowing he couldn't even handle a little heckling from a bunch of kindergarteners. Can you imagine if this guy got on a middle school bus? Those kids would have had him in tears after a mile or two.
But in all seriousness, this bus driver is a hero for making sure nothing happened to those kids. And they unwittingly did more than their fair share, too.