all of the kids were singing. my mama told me you better shop around. that was the song we were singing when it happened. it was a little after 4:00 p.m. when ray turned the bus on to avenue 21 where a white van with the door ajar was parked near the center of the road. it looked like somebody had broken down. edward went to swing the bus around the van and at that .1 of the kidnapers jumped out of the passenger side with a rifle came up to the driver s side and told edward to open the door. the other kidnaper got on to the bus and took over. i do remember seeing one of the kidnapers with panty hose pulled over his face and holding a gun. i was scared immediately. who are you? what s going on here edward asked. the guy told him to shut up and move to the back of the bus. one of the masked men got behind the wheel as the other held a sawed off shot gun
terrified hostages. a third man followed in the rig white van. 26 children between the ages of 5 and 14 and their driver sater fied as their school becauus wa come deered. when did you get really afraid? after they drove us down a little bit they pull the bus into an actual slew bed. they found the marsh that was a mile from where it had been ceased. it wasn t a smooth drive down. everybody is crying. they are telling us to shut up or we are going to get hurt. shut up. we are waiting. what s going to happen now. they back up. one van and fill that with half of the students and then bring another van to fill up the other half. i did not want to get into the back of that van. that i knew. their bus hidden from view ed
iten enended up slide pg and th roof started collapsing. that s the point we knew we were going to have to do something. the older kids and ed ray came up with this plan if we are going to die we are going to die trying. we are saying edward we have to get out. we are going to die. what did the kid and driver do? they piled mattresses up so they could get high enough to the opening and they tried to remove whatever was blocking the hole they had put us in. later we found out they had put a steel plate on top of the hole and had put semi batteries on top of that. and then they had built a wooden box and covered it with sand to camouflage it. with the food gone and convinced they had been left for dead he had ray and some of the older boys worked for four-hours to free themselves with their makeshift tomb. despite the steel plate being almost half an inch thick and two industrial batteries on top
behind the wheel as the other held a sawed off shot gun on his tear fied hostages. a third man followed in the white van. 26 children between the ages of 5 and 14 and their driver sater fied as their school bus was commandeered. at what point did you get really afraid? after they had driven us down the road a little bit they pulled the bus down into an empty slew bed. they located the actual marsh which is also called a slew that the bus was driven into about a mile from where it has been ceased. it was not a smooth drive down in. it had brush. everybody is crying they are telling us to shut up or we are going to get hurt. shut up. we are waiting what s going to happen now. they back up one van and fill that with half of the students and bring another van to fill up the other van. i did not want to get into