The hijacked school bus after it was stopped in south suburban Glenwood (Zbigniew Bzdak/ChicagoTribune) A driver who made “threats to other employees” and hijacked a school bus with one other employee aboard in south suburban South Holland was shot and killed in Glenwood after he aimed the speeding bus at police trying to stop him, police said. SEE MORE PHOTOS The driver was accelerating at officers standing in front of the bus when he was shot by a South Holland police officer near the intersection of Main Street and Glenwood-Chicago Heights Road, said South Holland Police Chief Warren Millsaps in a press conference at the scene of the shooting early this afternoon. The driver had ignored repeated police orders to exit the bus, Millsaps said. Early reports indicated the bus driver may have fired a weapon, but Millsaps would not say if the man had a gun. “Anytime you have a bus that’s fleeing from police, at 65 or so miles an hour, it’s a deadly weapon,” Millsaps said. “And anytime you point that bus at an officer and drive it toward an officer or a civilian or anyone else, it’s a deadly weapon, and the officer is using the appropriate force necessary to terminate his actions.” The shooting followed a 10-minute police chase during which “numerous” police and civilian cars were hit by the bus, police said. The school bus was not carrying any children but a monitor was on board and she was not hurt, Millsaps and a bus company spokeswoman said. During the chase, the bus hit three squad cars and two or three civilian vehicles, Millsaps said. Two officers were injured, not seriously, but none of the occupants of the civilian vehicles were hurt, he said. The incident began around 7:22 a.m. at the First Student, Inc., bus barn at 169th and State streets in South Holland, police said. A disgruntled driver for the bus company showed up for work with “attitude issues” with a manager and was told he would not be allowed to drive today, the bus company said. The bus normally carries special needs students for a consortium of south suburban school districts and was operated by First Student Inc., a Cincinnati-based company. The driver took off, trying to run over bus company employees when they attempted to stop him, Millsaps said. Employees then called police and told them that the driver was “acting erractically,” Millsaps said. The bus company said it called police and also notified parents not to let their children board the bus should it stop to pick them up. When police arrived on the scene, they notified neighboring suburbs’ police departments to be on the lookout for the bus driver, Millsaps said in a later press release. Soon after, Riverdale police stopped the bus at Sibley Boulevard and State Street, Millsaps said. Officers ordered the driver out of the bus, but he refused and sped off, trying to hit a Riverdale police officer, Millsaps said in the release. Riverdale police gave chase and were joined by South Holland and Glenwood officers after the driver went south, Millsaps said. During the chase the bus driver struck “numerous” cars and police cars, he said. Millsaps had earlier said about five vehicles were struck. The 7-mile chase, in which the driver reached speeds of up to 70 mph, ended about 40 minutes after the driver took the bus, police said. The driver hit more police and civilian vehicles, then when the bus encountered a construction zone and police were able to get out of their vehicles and surround the bus to try to stop it, Millsaps said. When he was stuck in the construction zone, the driver had been headed south and turning from North Main Street in Glenwood onto an extension of Main Street also known as Glenwood-Lansing Road, Millsaps said. A Glenwood officer, among others, repeatedly ordered him to get out of the car, and when the driver instead accelerated, a South Holland officer fired twice, hitting the driver, Millsaps said. The bus then veered into a nearby home’s driveway and crashed into the house, Millsaps said. Officers then took the man off the bus and tried to save his life, Millsaps said. The officer used “the appropriate force necessary” in response to the driver using the bus as a deadly weapon, Millsaps said. The owner of a nearby restaurant was on the roof around 8:30 a.m. when he heard brakes squeal and saw a bus swerve into a residential driveway on Main Street near Glenwood-Chicago Heights Road. The bus almost hit the home, and he heard two or three shots. As the witness moved to a different part of the roof, he said about 9 or 10 police cars arrived. He heard several more shots and saw members of a road construction crew running away, he said. At Dennis Glenwood Marathon just north of where the bus crashed, employee Darren DeMario, 25, was in one of the car bays working “when a bus went by, then about 20 squads.” DeMario stepped out of the station to get a look and was a police officer as he “fired five shots. He fired through the driver’s window. I was pretty amazed. This was not something I expected to see at work.” The man who took the bus had been a driver for the company since March and drove off this morning from the company’s South Holland bus yard after an argument with a manager, company spokeswoman Nicol Jones said. She believed the police chase started in Riverdale. There were no children on board, but a female monitor was on the bus, Jones said. The monitor was not injured but was reported shaken up taken to a local hospital for observation, Jones said. The driver had cleared criminal and other background checks, Jones said. State police were investigating the shooting because it was police-involved, Millsaps said. — Dennis Sullivan , Staff Report
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School bus driver fatally shot after hijacking
