Italy: Driver Abducts Schoolchildren, Sets Bus Ablaze

[TomSea]

Italy: Driver Abducts Schoolchildren, Sets Bus Ablaze
By The Associated Press
    March 20, 2019

MILAN — A bus driver in northern Italy abducted 51 children and their chaperones Wednesday, ordering the children's hands to be bound and threatening them with death during the drive, before setting the vehicle on fire when he was stopped by a Carabinieri blockade.

Officers broke the glass in the back door of the bus and got all the passengers to safety without serious injury before the flames destroyed the vehicle, authorities said. As he was apprehended, the driver said he was protesting migrant deaths in the Mediterranean, Commander Luca De Marchis told Sky TG24.

De Marchis told Sky TG24 that the driver, an Italian citizen of Senegalese origin in his 40s, threatened the passengers, telling them that "no one would survive today" as he commandeered the bus carrying two middle-school classes in Cremona province, some 40 kilometers (25 miles) from Milan.

Read more at: https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2019/03/20/world/europe/ap-eu-italy-bus-fire.html

This was some serious story, sounds like it could have turned out worse, per the driver was a migrant, even if a legal migrant per above .. This could have turned out pretty badly.  Sheesh... and for the record, the NYT is the only one with this story I see so far....

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47642298  BBC, so that's about the same thing...

[skeeter]

Those crazy Italian school bus drivers.