Grandfather Charged in Bus Driver Attack

Rice

LOWNDES COUNTY, Miss. (WCBI) — A Lowndes County grandfather is charged after a confrontation with a school bus driver.

Court records show 51-year-old Roy Rice was charged with simple assault on a police officer and interference with a school bus following an incident Tuesday morning in front of his home off Lehmberg Road in the New Hope area.

Schools superintendent Lynn Wright says the bus surveillance equipment caught Rice, his wife and his daughter getting on a school bus, cursing the bus driver repeatedly and snatching the driver’s cell phone when he tried to call for assistance.

“The bus driver handled everything very well,” Wright said of the driver, who is in his first year driving for the school district. “He did an excellent job managing and controlling the situation. You can see and hear everything on the bus surveillance camera.”

Wright says the family apparently was upset because they thought another student had thrown Rice’s 5-year-old granddaughter’s lunch box from the school bus the previous afternoon and because the driver let the young child off at New Hope Middle rather than nearby New Hope Elementary.

The girl actually left her lunch box on the bus. In addition, the driver realized the mistake when the girl got off the bus at the wrong stop and corrected it immediately by notifying the middle school assistant principal who walked the child from the middle school to the elementary school.

The school district is not providing bus service to the Rice home while the charges are pending in Lowndes County Justice Court.