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PD: Parents arrested after threatening school bus driver with gun

Posted at 6:01 PM, Sep 13, 2017
and last updated 2017-09-14 00:35:44-04

CINCINNATI -- Two parents of Pleasant Hill Academy students were arrested Wednesday afternoon amid pouring rain and terrified children’s screams after police said they threatened a school bus driver with a gun.

"I don't want to get on that bus tomorrow," sixth grader Na'Kel Shores said later that night.

According to Shores and Sgt. Eric Franz, two had begun to fight aboard the bus as it made its regularly scheduled stops in Winton Terrace.

"(Someone) punched this boy and then everybody jumped in punching this one boy," Shores said.

When the driver pulled over and called police -- as Franz said bus drivers are trained to do after a fight -- children began to call their parents. By the time parents arrived, many of the students were standing outside in the rain; others had stepped into friends' parents' cars to escape the weather.

Shores' mother, Natasha, said she couldn't find her son at first. When she finally did, he was in tears. 

"That should never happen," Shores' mother, Natasha, said. "Shouldn't nobody pull up and not know where their kids is when they're supposed to be on the bus."

Franz said the two men arrested at the scene were parents who had physically threatened the bus driver in the ensuing chaos. 

“These m-----f----- said I had a gun pointed at the bus driver,” one suspect shouted to the crowd as officers pulled him at gunpoint from a car containing two wailing children. 

The other remained silent as officers patted him down and led him to a squad car.

Jay Brock, a spokesman for school bus company First Student, said the situation was still “fluid” and an investigation would be conducted into the events of the afternoon.

“We want to focus on the safety of our driver and our kids,” he said.

Neither suspect’s identity had been publicized by midnight Wednesday. Both will be charged with aggravated menacing, according to Franz.