Several school buses were stolen from Orleans Parish, loaded with storm victims and driven out of New Orleans toward Houston in desperate acts to leave the ravaged city, according to reports. Three school buses were stopped Thursday night in Port Allen, La., just west of Baton Rouge after they were stolen, according to WBRZ-TV in Baton Rouge. The evacuees were placed on other buses and transferred to shelters in Texas.
An 18-year-old also decided to take matters into his own hands and stole an abandoned city school bus and drove storm victims to Texas, according to a CNN report. The teen driver, Jabbar Gibson, 18, said he had never driven a bus before but wanted to save people. “If it wasn’t for him, we’d still be in New Orleans on the Gulf,” bus passenger Randy Nathan said. “He got the bus for us.”
Authorities allowed the renegade passengers inside the Astrodome but Gibson could find himself in trouble after taking the school bus.
Let me get this straight. The government can suspend “unalienable” liberties and property rights due to an emergency of its own declaration, but even during such an emergency, private individuals are not to touch government property even to save their lives. That’s worth remembering too.
After all, those buses belonged to the government, not the public, and they should have been sitting here.