Gunshots that hit Coatesville school bus were targeted at a student who was on board, DA says
A Coatesville, Pennsylvania school bus full of students was hit by gunfire after a group of four people tried to shoot a student who was getting off the bus, officials in Chester County said Friday.
Bullets hit the bus around 2:30 p.m. Thursday – leading to the cancellation of Thursday night's Downingtown-Coatesville football game. Coatesville's intermediate and senior high schools went virtual Friday, and the elementary and middle schools had extra police presence as a precaution, the Coatesville Area School District superintendent said.
Now authorities are looking for the shooters seen on surveillance cameras firing at the bus. One person from that group is already in custody, Chester County District Attorney Christopher de Barrena-Sarobe said in a news conference.
"This is not some school shooting or someone trying to shoot up a school bus, or a drive-by," de Barrena-Sarobe said. "This was a targeted event where the actors were targeting someone getting off the bus."
The person in custody is a 17-year-old Coatesville student facing aggravated assault charges along with other offenses.
The bus was hit on Hope Avenue between Charles and Madison streets after school ended.
Two of the four people fired from two separate weapons as the bus made a stop, police chief Jack Laufer said in a news conference.
A total of eight shots were fired from about a block away, two of which hit the bus, one in the front grille and the other hit the windshield just above the driver's head.
No one on the bus was injured.
The DA had these words for the remaining three suspects.
"My message to those three people is, 'get ahead of this,'" de Barrena-Sarobe said. "Go to your families, go to your religious leaders here in Coatesville, and come into the Coatesville police department and turn yourself in."
"We have an idea of where this investigation is going, and this is your chance to put the community at ease," he added. "Because there is not a single child that should ever feel like their school bus is not a safe place."
After the shooting, the driver parked the bus at a nearby fire station in Westwood just outside Coatesville, Laufer said.
A student who was on the bus during the shooting said they "never ducked down so quick ever in my life."
"I heard three pops," the student said. "I felt like I heard it from the side of the bus, then I seen the glass shatter."
Police have some "good leads" on the identity of the other three people, but are hoping they will turn themselves in.
"We are investigating the source of it, but we believe there is a personal feud between... students at the school," de-Barrena Sarobe said. "This is where we are as a society now, kids have access to guns at an unbelievable rate ... that they are subjected and feel subjected to ridicule on social media and other circles, and we are left in a position where we have kids leaving school early, apparently, to gang up and go shoot at somebody. This is just one symptom that we are seeing across the region and across the country that kids have access to guns, and we need to do something about it."
