14 DAY TRIAL // This past weekend, a young boy living in the city of Saskatoon in Canada's Saskatchewan province stole a city bus, took it out for a spin, and eventually crashed it into another bus and a truck.
Neither the 9-year-old boy, whose identity is yet to be revealed, nor the people in the other bus and the truck suffered any major injuries as a result of this accident. Still, many were left pretty shaken up by the experience.
Who's to blame?
Information shared with the public by the officers in charge of handling this case says that the 9-year-old got behind the wheel of the city bus after a maintenance worker made one very simple mistake: he left the vehicle unattended.
It is understood that, when the worker abandoned the vehicle with its engine still running and went to get something from a nearby garage, the boy seized the opportunity. In a nutshell, he climbed in and got comfy in the driver's seat.
“This is a case, from what I've seen, where policy and procedures very clearly violated,” Jeff Jorgenson with the local Transportation and Utilities Department told the press in an interview, as cited by Huffingon Post.
At the time the bus was left unattended, the 9-year-old was simply riding his bicycle around the neighborhood. He was wearing nothing but pajamas, but he refused to let his outfit stand between him and the chance to experience first-hand what driving a city bus must feel like.
The journey and its epic finale
Media reports say that, after stealing the bus, the 9-year-old managed to actually drive it for a good three blocks. In fact, the vehicle only came to a stop after crashing with one other bus and a truck. Not at all surprisingly, this accident was the boy's fault.
Apart from crashing the bus, the 9-year-old drove it over a curb. Luckily, no passers-by were injured. It's still unclear how the boy mustered the courage to pull this little stunt off. Then again, given his age, he probably had no idea that what he was doing was wrong and that his joyride could have ended way worse than it did.
Because he is still very young, the 9-year-old would-be driver will not be asked to answer for his deeds in front of a court of law. Still, one can only assume that his parents weren't as lenient as the officers who caught him behind the bus' wheel, and that he is to be without TV and Internet privileges for quite a while.