For a group of 40 kids at a Colorado elementary school, what they thought would be a typical school bus ride home turned into the scariest afternoon of their lives. During their trip home, the substitute bus driver began threatening the students and skipping stops before kicking the kids off the bus altogether.
Scared and cold, the kids panicked while they figured out how to get home, many without ways to contact their parents. Now, the parents are putting pressure on the school district to figure out how such a thing happened in the first place.
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The driver was a substitute.
On Monday, November 18, 2024, students from Clear Sky Elementary School in Castle Rock, Colorado, got on their school bus to go home. But they realized that it wasn’t their usual driver. According to kids on the bus, the driver told them he wasn’t leaving the school parking lot until they stopped talking. This meant they left later than they normally do. Leaving late was about to be the least of their problems.
“He finally left, and he was skipping all the kids’ stops, and when I say all the kids, I mean all the kids,” 10-year-old Caitlyn Zavadil told 9News. “And we felt like when he was driving and missing our stops, like we were getting kidnapped.”
Many of the kids on the bus found themselves miles away from their homes.
The driver took the kids about 2 miles away from the school, they said. According to multiple families, the driver pulled up to an intersection near a cemetery and opened the doors.
Caitlyn recalls the driver saying “everybody get off my bus.” She shared that the 40 students who were still on the bus were “stressing” and “crying.” It was nearly 5 p.m. and getting dark as the students tried to retrieve their jackets while shivering and cold.
“I felt like I was never going to get home,” Caitlyn’s sister Keira Schmidt, 7, said. Neither of the girls have a phone and couldn’t call home. The parent of another student gave them a lift home.
Parents are understandably livid and pushing for answers.
Ashley Stark, Caitlyn and Keira’s mother, told KDVR that while the kids were still on the bus, the driver “proceeded to tell them that he was an Army veteran and that he was bigger, stronger, tougher, braver than all the children. If they didn’t be quiet then there would be consequences.”
Another parent, Savanna Keisling, said that the pickup location “felt as if there was an active shooter on that bus the way these children were just running from it, running out of it, running through traffic, scattering all over the place.”
“This is unacceptable and sorry will never be enough,” Tony Martin, dad of a third grader, said.
The school district is trying to work with families to get answers.
“On Monday, a relief driver was covering route #253,” an email sent to parents from Rich Cosgrove, chief operations officer for the Douglas County School District said.
“Relief drivers are full-time employees who step in as needed across our 850 square mile district. Your child’s route consists of 12 stops. On the third stop on Monday afternoon, the bus stopped just short of the usual location, leading to some confusion. At that time, the remaining 40 students on the bus all exited, with many getting off at the wrong bus stop. Regrettably, the driver did not follow protocol when this happened. The driver should have immediately notified DCSD transportation dispatch.”
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The driver has been fired and has apologized.
Irving Johnson, the bus driver, released a statement apologizing after he was fired.
“I would just like to apologize,” Johnson said. He added, “I am sorry. I wish I had done better. I should have stopped and shut the bus, and talked to the parents, and gotten in their heads to get the kids back on the bus who had gotten off. And I didn’t think to do that, and that was my fault, and that’s why I got terminated. That’s what they told me.”
