An armed U.S. Army trainee hijacked a school bus full of elementary school students in South Carolina on Thursday before letting the children off, abandoning the bus, and surrendering to authorities.
The trainee was stationed at Fort Jackson and left the base with a rifle at around 7 a.m. local time and tried flagging drivers on Interstate 77 before he saw the school bus, Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott detailed during a press conference later that morning.
The alleged assailant was later identified by Lott as Jovan Collazo, 23, who was in his third week of training at the base. He is being charged with 19 counts of kidnapping and other crimes.
The trainee allegedly told the bus driver “he didn’t want to hurt him, but he wanted him to drive him to the next town,” Lott said.
The suspect was wearing Army physical training gear, Lott said, adding that the children asked Collazo if he was going to hurt them or the driver.
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Questioning by the children “frustrated” the hijacker, police said. The hijacker then let the driver and children off the bus and drove a short distance before abandoning the bus and leaving his rifle on board. He was soon detained without incident.
The school bus driver nor any of the 18 children on board the bus were harmed.
There was no ammunition in the rifle, said Fort Jackson Commanding Brig. Gen. Milford Beagle.
“He was a very quiet individual, hailed from New Jersey … and we assessed that he was just trying to make an attempt to go back home,” Beagle said Thursday. “There is nothing that leads us to believe … that this had anything to do with harming others, harming himself, or anything that links to any other type of nefarious activity.”
The incident exposed “a key failure in our accountability processes that I will fix, going forward, because the outcome potentially could have been much worse,” Beagle added.
“We’re very thankful that we had a situation this morning that ended very peacefully where we didn’t have anyone that was hurt,” Lott said.
Lott added that the 911 call about a school bus being hijacked by an armed intruder is “probably one of the scariest calls that we can get in law enforcement.”
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Some students had cellphones and called their parents, alerting them about the hijacking. Lott added that the bus driver kept calm during the entire situation.
“I’ll give the bus driver credit,” the sheriff said. “He kept his cool. He didn’t overreact. He didn’t get excited. He kept his cool enough that kept the situation calm. And I will tell you his main concern was the safety of those kids.”
In addition to the 19 counts of kidnapping, Collazo faces charges of carjacking, possessing a weapon on school property, armed robbery, and weapons possession during a violent crime.
The Army might also take disciplinary action against him, which could include charges of being absent without leave and theft of a weapon from the base, Beagle said.
Court records did not list an attorney for Collazo.
UPDATE: This article has been updated with the name of the suspect and other details.
