A school bus driver has been arrested after being caught on camera drinking beer while transporting some 32 elementary-aged children to school, ABC news reported.
44-year-old Michelle Passley was first brought to local police’s attention on November 15.
A manager at the First Student Bus Company alerted authorities after “an observant convenience store clerk” reported selling beer to a woman who then got into a school bus and drove away.
Police reviewed surveillance footage from Passley’s school bus and caught the driver drinking from a brown paper bag.
The most troubling discovery, however, was that Passley was drinking and driving while transporting a bus full of young students to school.
“In all, 32 students were observed on the bus while the driver was drinking from the two beer cans,” the official police statement reveals.
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Aurora Police Department Chief Kristen Ziman held a press conference to address the disturbing incident.
“When we put our children on the school bus in the morning, the idea is that we have placed our kids in the safe keeping of someone who is going to take good care of them,” she said on Tuesday prior to releasing the bus footage. “It’s infuriating to believe that someone who is trusted with these children on a daily basis could potentially put them in this kind of danger.”
Passley was promptly fired from her job and was arrested on Monday.
She was charged with two counts of endangering the life/health of a child and released on a $100 bond.
The Illinois Secret of State’s Office has also been contacted to review Passley’s commercial driver’s license. She is scheduled to appear in court on December 27.
Watch the full video below.
Chief Ziman said she was shocked by Passley’s blatant disregard for the students’ safety.
“It evokes a strong strong reaction in me… It’s absolutely brazen,” she told reporters. “But for that convenience store clerk that contacted the school district, we’d be none the wiser of this. So there are two very strong messages going out: that it’s not tolerated, and that we need the community’s involvement.”
