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Unmarked School Bus Found to Be on Official Business

The Michigan school bus that was trying to pick up students and had been reported as suspicious has been discovered to have been driving a route for a charter school.

Nicole Schlosser
Nicole SchlosserFormer Executive Editor
October 20, 2017
2 min to read


YPSILANTI TOWNSHIP, Mich. — A school bus traveling in the area on Thursday that was reported as suspicious has since been discovered to have been driving a route for a charter school, police said.

As previously reported, a school bus that was believed to have a school district’s name covered by spray paint was trying to pick up students at a bus stop. When a parent who was waiting there with the students wouldn’t let them board, the driver reportedly sped off. Two similar sightings were reported soon after.

However, on Thursday afternoon, deputies located the bus and confirmed that it belongs to a transportation company, according to a Nixle alert from the Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Office. (Police had received a tip to that effect, MLive reports.) The Sheriff’s Office also confirmed in the alert that the route and timing of the bus arriving at stops was consistent with the job it was contracted to perform.

Van Buren Public Schools, which had alerted parents and other school districts about the incident, posted an update on its website on Thursday afternoon, stating that it was notified by the Sheriff’s Office that the unmarked bus was a new transportation provider for another school, and that the incident was not an abduction scenario.

Police told MLive that the bus was driving an official route for a charter school. K. Crockett, the principal of the school, told the news source that someone filed a false report about the bus luring students, and that the bus has been picking up students regularly since the first day of school. Crockett also told MLive that she didn’t know whether the name of the company had been covered with paint. She declined to name the bus company, but said that it had provided transportation for the students of the charter school for two years.

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