School Bus Driver Traumatized By Attempted Shooting Of Teen Speaks Out About Incident

PRINCE GEORGE'S COUNTY, MD — On May 1, school bus driver Natalie Brower's life changed forever.

Brower was behind the wheel of a school bus where three teenage boys attacked and attempted to shoot a teen passenger. But the weapon malfunctioned.

The assault happened shortly before 5 p.m. when the bus had stopped at Iverson Street and Sutler Drive in Oxon Hill to drop off students, Patch reported previously. While stopped, three teenage boys boarded the bus and began to attack the victim who was still on the bus, according to Prince George's County Police.

One of the suspects pulled out a gun and tried to shoot the victim several times, but the weapon didn't fire, police said. The teenager suffered minor injures during the assault. Two adults — Brower and a bus aide — were on or near the bus at the time and were uninjured. Video of the attack released by police shows a teenage attacker holding a gun to the victim’s head and chest while his two accomplices hold the victim down, police said. All three teens then beat the victim and fled.

“This has changed my whole life,” Natalie Brower told WTOP. “Oh … that gun. That gun and seeing that gun jam. And thinking [the victim] was sitting in the seats directly behind me. Right behind me when they attacked him.”

When the boys boarded the bus, they didn't say a word to Brower nor looked at her, she said. But if the gun hadn't jammed, the thought of what might have happened to her, the teen passenger and others haunts her memories.

“It’s something I wouldn’t want my worst enemy to go through,” she said.

When the driver's aide climbed back on the bus, Brower drove everyone a mile away to a safe place where they waited for police. The teenager who was beaten up begged her to drive off.

“He said ‘let’s go, let’s go, they’re trying to kill me,’” she recalled. “He had a big knot on his face. They hit him pretty hard.”

Now, Brower has been left with anxiety and insomnia. Brower and Martin Diggs, the president of ACE-AFSCME 2250, the union that represents personnel throughout the school system, told WTOP that more is needed to protect school employees.

“We want the county … to take a look at the recommendations that Local 2250 have given to the school system,” Diggs said.

Those recommendations include increasing security at elementary schools and on buses, and putting more aides on the buses.

Baby K, a 15-year-old suspect, has been charged as an adult with attempted first-degree murder, attempted second-degree murder, assault, firearms offenses and additional charges. The other suspects are a 14-year-old boy from Suitland, a 15-year-old boy from Temple Hills and a 14-year-old girl from Oxon Hill. They have been charged as adults, too.