Thirteen private school children were returned to Oley, Pa., early last Friday morning after being taken by a school bus driver, who was armed with a loaded semi-automatic rifle, on an unauthorized six-hour trip to Landover Hills, Md.
The 63-year old bus driver, Otto L. Nuss Jr., has been charged in federal court with kidnapping. Mr. Nuss told Prince George’s County, Md., police officers that he was planning to take the children on a field trip to Washington on Jan. 24, but got lost on the way.
Mr. Nuss, a school bus driver for a private bus company that serves the Oley Valley public school district, was supposed to transport the children from Oley Valley High School to the Berks Christian School in Exeter Township, Pa., according to the FBI. Instead, FBI officials say, he took them to Maryland.
The children, whose ages range from 7 to 15, were unharmed. —MICHELLE GALLEY
