Landover Hills, Md. — A school bus driver with a loaded rifle took 13 children on a six-hour odyssey Thursday that ended in another state when he turned himself in to a police officer, authorities said.
None of the children was hurt, but some saw the gun and feared the driver was going to kill them, according to an FBI affidavit.
The students' parents waited anxiously for word of the bus after it vanished on the way to a private school northwest of Philadelphia.
Authorities said driver Otto Nuss said he had a gun and had brought the children to the outskirts of the nation's capital against their will.
"He said he wanted to show them Washington, D.C.," FBI spokesman Peter Gulotta Jr. said.
The children told FBI agents the driver told them not to go near the gun, according to an affidavit from special agent Thomas D. Neeson.
"One of the students, fearing what was going to happen, wrote 911 in reverse on a fogged bus window," according to the affidavit.
Nuss, 63, faces federal kidnapping charges. He was taken to jail Thursday evening, and a court appearance was scheduled today.
The bus picked up the students, ages 7 through 15, about 7:30 a.m. at a high school in Oley, Pa., for the 6-mile trip to the Berks Christian School in Birdsboro, Pa. The bus never showed up.
Citizens, a police helicopter and cruisers searched frantically in wet weather.
The students said the driver ignored a dispatcher's efforts to contact him by radio. Nuss told authorities some of the students wanted to return home, but he told them they could not, according to the affidavit.
The journey ended 115 miles away, parked outside a Family Dollar discount store in Landover Hills, just a few miles from Washington.
Nuss walked into the store and approached off-duty Officer Milton Chabla, telling him he had left a gun on the bus, police said.
Nuss told Chabla he had taken the children and wanted to turn himself in. "He wanted the kids to be OK and let their parents know they were OK," said Chabla, who was wearing his police uniform at the store.
The gun was a semiautomatic rifle loaded with five rounds. Gulotta said it was found behind the driver's seat, covered by a coat.
The children's parents were reunited with the children at a Maryland police station.
Authorities said Nuss had worked for the Quigley Bus Service since September. School officials said Nuss had not driven a school bus before this year, but had passed a criminal background check.
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