Judy Oates decided to be a bus driver after she had to drive her five kids to school everyday. “Why not get paid for it?” she said. Since May 15, 1984, Oates has been behind the wheel of a school bus for Anderson School District 4, and after 32 years on the job, she’s fallen in love with the position. She has worked her way up to assistant supervisor. “I started working in the office a couple hours a day. Then it went to four hours and then to all day,” she said. As an assistant supervisor, she helps make sure routes are covered, does commercial driver’s license training and physical fitness and bus certification, which includes teaching the drivers how to parallel park. Including special needs buses, she helps to coordinate the 19 buses, drivers and routes.
Risqué communication is a tricky prospect, especially when conducted over the Internet—you never know who’s on the other end. A Colorado public schools bus driver is facing multiple child-sex charges after he allegedly attempted to arrange a sexual encounter with someone he believed to be a 14-year-old boy. Instead, this boy turned out to be an undercover agent for the Department of Homeland Security. Philip Ogren, 66, who had driven for the school district for more than a year, was jailed after arriving at a park for what investigators allege was a planned meeting with a teenage boy. “This is a serious matter. We don’t take it lightly,” said a district spokesperson. “He passed all the background and safety checks when he was hired.” The investigation into Ogren began when an undercover agent saw an ad on the Internet posted by someone looking to meet someone for a sexual encounter. The agent began communicating with the person who posted the ad through e-mail and eventually text messages. The district immediately placed Ogren on leave and notified 220 families whose children take his routes each day.
You never know the true extent of a person’s depravity until they’re caught conducting heinous crimes. Federal prosecutors say a 31-year-old northern New Jersey school bus driver could face anywhere from 15 to 60 years in prison if convicted for distributing hundreds of files of child pornography. Christopher Walsh faces three counts of distributing images or video files containing child porn via e-mail. From June 2014 to January 2016, Walsh’s e-mail account either sent or received 1,590 files that contained videos and/or images of child sexual abuse. Walsh allegedly sent videos to another person last August, saying one showed a child he had met on a school trip and the other was one Walsh created.
Showing a complete disregard for the safety of others, a New York state man was charged with driving without a license and leaving the scene of an accident that involved a school bus. Efrain Menjivar, 32, drove through a red light at an intersection, colliding with the left bumper of a school bus carrying children after attempting to pass the vehicle. According to police, Menjivar fled the scene. He was capture at his residence inside the vehicle, where Menivar was arrested. He was later released on bail.
