Man steals school bus, goes on wild ride as cops chase him through B’klyn
A thief took a yellow school bus on a wild joyride through Brooklyn Thursday afternoon, ramming it into several vehicles in a futile effort to elude police officers surrounding him in vehicles and on foot.
The crazed pursuit began shortly before 3 p.m. near the Broadway Junction subway station in East New York, when police spotted the bus moving erratically and tried to stop it. Its driver — named by police as Anthony Reyes, 43, of Queens — crashed into several vehicles as he fled officers.
The bus had no children inside, cops said. Reyes came upon the school bus about 1:30 p.m. in the East Flatbush driveway of Walson Jacques, its operator. Jacques had just driven the bus from the company’s base to his home on E. 51st St. near Linden Blvd. to get a bite to eat.
“I came out and my bus was gone. I didn’t see or hear anything,” said Jacques, who works for Hoyt Transportation Corp. “The key was in the ignition, because it was in my own driveway.”
After driving to East New York, Reyes launched the bus bedlam in earnest by ramming the entrance of Women in Need, a family homeless shelter on Junius St. and East New York Ave., said police and witnesses.
“The bus just drove up and into the building. He went up onto the sidewalk and smashed it. He backed up and kept on going. It was crazy,” said Shawn Chisholm, 33, a maintenance worker at the shelter.
Police soon surrounded the bus as it headed north on Georgia Ave. toward Atlantic Ave., video posted on TikTok shows.
Reyes lurched between forward and reverse and rammed sedan out of his way, the video shows. White smoke billowed behind the bus, and its back door flapped open as officers screamed out to stunned bystanders to back away and stay in their cars.
“He was smashing into everything in his path. He pushed one car half a block, then he backed up into every car behind him. He just went back and forth smashing them,” said Michael Johnson, 39, who was walking on Georgia Ave.
Cops tried to Taser the driver. “Nothing could stop him. He just kept going,” Johnson said.
A motorist who gave her name as Laura said she couldn’t evade the mayhem.
“There was a bus coming from behind me pushing another car,” Laura said. “I beeped, I pulled over to the side, but there was nowhere to go.
“The bus plowed into another car. That car went out of the way and then the bus plowed into my car,” Laura said.
“A ton of police officers ran and pulled me out of my car. The bus reversed and then pushed my car out onto Atlantic.”
Police finally subdued Reyes with a Taser and busted him at Jamaica and Sheffield Ave., about two blocks from the caught-onvideo carnage, cops said.
At least one person, the driver of a Dodge Charger struck during the mayhem, was hospitalized. Police said no one was seriously hurt in the chaos.
Reyes is accused of grand larceny, reckless endangerment, unauthorized use of a vehicle, resisting arrest, and other counts. He is on parole after being sentenced to 3½ years in prison for a 2019 robbery conviction in the Bronx, said law enforcement sources.
Attempts to reach the bus company were unsuccessful Thursday night.