A 12-year-old Florida boy allegedly took a school bus for a joyride in Panama City Beach early on Tuesday morning and made it 14 miles without having a problem until he tried to park at Walmart.
Store employees observed that the vehicle was having issues parking and then noticed that the driver did not appear to be old enough to have a license. “It was just odd the way he drove it,” Walmart employee Roy Hoover told the News Herald.
“He had a hard time parking it, like he’d never driven one before.” Michael Wade Propst apparently found the door of the bus unlocked and the keys in the ignition, so he decided to take it for a spin. Propst’s driving skills impressed onlookers.
“You have to take a weeklong course to operate a bus like that,” said Bay District School’s chief security officer, Mike Jones. “Yet at 12 he was able to drive one, and he didn’t just take it around the block.”
Authorities charged Propst with grand theft of an item worth more than $100,000, felony criminal mischief, and additional crimes. When police contacted Propst’s mother, she asked police to reason with the boy because “she was not having any impact on him.”
Content contributed by Evan Bleier, reported from Panama City Beach, Florida, USA, sourced by upi.com
