2 teens charged after gun taken on bus

Published 12:00 am Sunday, January 31, 2010

A 13-year-old Vicksburg girl was criminally charged by the Warren County Sheriff’s Office after she took a .25-caliber semi-automatic pistol onto a school bus occupied by children riding home from school Friday.

A 17-year-old boy, Julius De’shun Mobley, 4900 Rollingwood Estates Drive, has also been arrested for providing the weapon to the girl, Sheriff Martin Pace said Saturday.

No shots were fired and no one was injured, but authorities were troubled by the fact that the bus driver did not report the incident to school or law enforcement officials, the sheriff said.

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“This matter is still under investigation and more arrests may follow,” Pace said. “Our obvious concern is how this could take place and the bus driver not report it to the authorities.” He said the parents of another student on the bus reported it.

Pace would not identify the bus driver, saying the information is in the hands of school officials, with whom sheriff’s investigators will meet Monday.

“The driver has not been charged with anything at this time,” Pace said.

Neither Superintendent Dr. James Price nor transportation director David Keen returned calls Saturday asking for comment.

The bus was delivering home students of Grove Street School, said Vicksburg Warren School District school resource officer Dewayne Sims. Grove Street is an alternative school serving students who are at-risk, have special needs or have been suspended or are under discipline from other schools.

Pace said students of “a variety of ages” were riding at the time, but it was not known how many or what ages.

The situation began when the girl, who as a minor is not identified, argued on the bus with a juvenile boy, the sheriff said. She made a phone call to Mobley and had him meet her at a bus stop with the pistol, he said.

At a stop on Gibson Road near the Rollingwood Estates subdivision, the girl apparently went to the door of the bus, was passed the gun by Mobley and went back to her seat, Pace said. The altercation with the other boy continued but the gun was not fired.

Sims confirmed the driver did not report the incident to school officials.

The call came from a parent whose child was on the bus but not involved in the fight but was frightened by it, Pace said.

“From that point on, the sheriff’s department got involved,” said Sims. “I assisted them in getting what they needed to get the investigation going.”

That information included locating the bus driver, who was interviewed in person by the sheriff and investigators, he said.

Sims did not know the number of the bus on which the incident occurred.

He also could not speak to the district’s policies about students exiting or nearly exiting and then re-entering buses. “I don’t know what will happen to the driver,” Sims said. “That will be up to the transportation director.”

The girl was charged with having a firearm on a bus, a felony, and taken to the Juvenile Detention Center for Youth Court authorities, Pace said.

Mobley and the gun were taken to the sheriff’s office by a parent Friday night and the gun, unloaded at that time, was turned over to investigators. Mobley was charged with providing a firearm to a minor on school property, also a felony. He was being held Saturday in the Warren County Jail. Bond had not yet been set.

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Contact Pamela Hitchins at phitchins@vicksburgpost.com