from cnn.com:
http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/01/24/missing.school.bus/index.html
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LANDOVER HILLS, Maryland (CNN) -- An off-duty police officer found a school bus carrying 13 children from Pennsylvania that had been missing for than five hours Thursday, and detained the driver and seized a loaded rifle found on the bus.
There was no explanation for why the bus deviated than 100 miles off its assigned route.
"The driver is in custody and all the kids are safe, uninjured," said Mark Williams, communications director in Berks County, where the Berks Christian Academy is located. "I really don't know if he had any kind of a history or what his problem was," said Williams.
Pennsylvania State Police spokesman Ramon Albert said the bus was parked on Annapolis Road in Landover Hills. A passing, off-duty police officer saw children waving out the window and entered the bus. When the officer saw the shotgun, he took the driver into custody. The driver put up no resistance.
"He went on the bus and arrested the man for having a shotgun and 13 distraught children," Oley Police Chief George Endy said.
Parents of the children are being taken to Maryland by state police to pick them up, Albert said.
Police identified the driver as Otto Nuss, in his 60s. The employee of Quigley Bus Co. had picked up the first- through ninth-graders at their homes and was expected to arrive at Berks Christian School in Birdsboro by 9 a.m.
There was no immediate explanation for why the driver had gone miles off his assigned route, police said.
Nuss has been the regular driver on the route and was considered to be a careful and considerate man. On a recent snowy day, he shoveled a path from the sidewalk to the door of the bus, said Robert Becker, the school administrator.
The public schools are responsible for picking up private school students, said Frank Love, the school's athletic director and Bible teacher.
Close to 100 police, a police helicopter and dozens of family members had been combing the route, a school spokeswoman said. The school's student body numbers about 200.
Agents from the Philadelphia FBI field office were involved in the investigation.
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What's the difference between a loaded rifle and a shotgun - nothing to the news media! [:(!]
(If it was [i]even[/i] loaded.