Teen sentenced for stabbing bus driver

LIMA — A 14-year-old who stabbed a bus driver in the neck and caused the bus to crash off Interstate 75 last fall will avoid prison, so long as he completes a treatment program in Bowling Green.

Judge Glenn Derryberry of Allen County Juvenile Court sentenced him Wednesday to a suspended sentence to the Department of Youth Services, on the condition he completes a program at the Juvenile Residential Center of Northwestern Ohio, a treatment center that is an alternative to sending a child to prison. He also placed him on probation, with community service on his plate and ordered him to pay $1,000 in restitution to Shawnee schools.

Derryberry said he considered a number of factors, including the effect the crime has had on the victim, before issuing the sentence.

“What the victim saw and what the victim experienced, how it was related to the court in the victim impact statement, was chilling,” Derryberry said. “This could have turned out much worse...We could have had bodies laying out there on the highway instead of a wrecked bus.”

The teen apologized for his actions as well as to the school, his parents and the bus driver.

“I would like to apologize to Mr. Garry Price for causing physical harm,” he said.

The boy entered an admission in November to one count each of assault and vandalism. Each count is a fifth-degree felony. Prosecutors dropped three other charges in exchange for the admission, which is the same as a guilty plea in adult court.

The crime happened Oct. 25 when a Shawnee school bus carrying three pupils was south on Interstate 75 coming from the county alternative school on Slabtown Road to Shawnee schools. The pupil, seated near the middle of the bus, got up and stabbed bus driver Garry Price, 67, in the neck with a pencil, according to a police report.

The boy then grabbed the steering wheel and jerked the bus off the right side of the interstate near McClain Road. The bus, which was moving at 64 mph, narrowly missed a guardrail and rolled up an embankment. The bus suffered extensive damaged.

At an earlier hearing, the boy said he was walking up an aisle of the bus with a pencil in hand when he was pushed from behind by another boy. His statement made it sound as if it were an accident but Assistant Allen County Prosecutor Chris Steffan said that was not the case.

“That was not an accidental tripping over someone. The defendant's plan was to wreck the bus and run away,” she said.

Derryberry also sentenced the teen to the local treatment center at the court should he not be accepted into the program in Bowling Green.

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