Honolulu,HI: Hawaii County bus stolen, involved in crash on August, Saturday 5th 2017

KHON2 first told you about a stolen Hawaii County bus Saturday night. Now we’re getting more answers on how someone was able to get away with it.

We also asked County Officials what they’re doing to prevent another theft.

The bus was gone for several hours on Saturday. County officials didn’t know it was stolen until after the bus side swiped another vehicle later in the day.

Hawaii Police found the bus in Pahoa along Highway 130 around 2:30 p.m. Saturday afternoon, and has one man in custody.

Curtis Sharp of Hawaii County’s Mass Transit Agency said the bus driver that was supposed to use Bus 342 for his shift noticed it was missing — so he used another another bus instead.

“When we discovered that 342 was missing we didn’t think immediately that it’s been stolen, we’ve had situations in the past where a bus driver was assigned to a bus but comes in and takes another bus by accident,” Sharp said.

That was around 10 a.m. Saturday morning. It wasn’t until about four hours later that a Facebook post described how a county bus sideswiped a vehicle.

“We checked with all the bus drivers. We checked with the bus driver that was supposed to be driving 342, and he said, ‘no I’m not driving that one, I’m driving another bus,’ so that was when we concluded that the bus was taken,” Sharp said.

Sharp believes the suspect may have stolen the bus earlier that morning from the bus yard. He tells KHON2 the suspect is not an employee or former employee of MTA, but had to have known how to start the bus.

“There’s a master switch in the back [that when turned] provides electricity from the battery — there’s sort of a button that you pull out and goes back in to start the engine,” Sharp explained. “If the master key is still on, then anybody [can] walk in there and start the engine if they knew to use that key.”

Sharp said about 2:30 p.m. in the afternoon on Saturday police found the bus along Highway 130 near Pahoa and arrested the driver.

No passengers were on the bus at the time. Sharp said there is damage to the door of the bus.

Some of the drivers who passed by the crime scene said they couldn’t believe their eyes.

“This is crazy to think that you can get away with stealing a big huge bus,” Tanei Kahanu said.

“We live on an island I don’t know where they are going to go with it,” David Marquis said.

We asked if there was any type of security at the bus yard in Hilo. Sharp said there is no security guard.

There is a lock for the main gate entrance, but it’s not locked as often as it should be.

“These trucks they come in they come out, they get fuel they go to get serviced by the Parks Department so there is a lot of traffic going back and forth.”

We asked what they’re doing so that this doesn’t happen again.

“The first thing immediately we discussed that all the master switches in the busses need to be turned off. The back cover of the engine, that needs to be locked, it’s capable of being locked, so once we’ve done that no one can get inside the bus. No one can get in and start the bus up,” Sharp said.

Sharp tells KHON2 the issues with the gate being locked will have to involve other county agencies who use the yard.

“There’s much we can’t do in terms of the gate it’s just not us going through the whole gate,” Sharp said. “It’s quite involved, but we will start doing something on Monday. We will take care of this problem.”

We also asked Sharp why the stolen bus wasn’t reported missing when the bus driver assigned to that bus first started his shift.

Sharp says they will look into that issue as well, and have all bus drivers alert management immediately if a bus is missing.

We’ll be checking in with them and let you know what other changes will be made.




Source :
Hawaii County bus stolen, involved in crash