School buses mistakenly take 29-year-old man to Tennessee high school, officials say
A series of blunders on a school bus route ended with a grown man being picked up off the streets and taken to a Tennessee high school — where he was arrested, officials say.
It happened Aug. 10 in Grainger, Tennessee, and multiple news outlets report 29-year-old Juan Purkey was charged with trespassing on school grounds. Grainger County is northeast of Knoxville, in east Tennessee.
The gaffes began when one of two bus drivers involved in his transport mistook Purkey for a student and stopped to pick him up, according a release from James Atkins, director of Grainger County Schools.
Purkey was “standing on the side of the road with papers and a binder” at the time, officials said.
“The bus driver picked the individual up, thinking he was a student,” Atkins said.
“This bus unloaded at Bean Station Elementary School, in which high school students were transferred to bus #34. Bus #34 had a substitute driver that was unfamiliar with the students. Therefore, the individual was transported to Grainger High School with all the other high school students and dropped off at the bus entrance.”
A teacher noticed Purkey at 8 a.m. and escorted him to the office, at which point the high school went into a “soft lockdown,” officials said. Law enforcement was alerted and Purkey was arrested, Atkins said.
School officials “followed all safety protocols,” Atkins said, but he apologized to parents for waiting a day to reveal what had happened.
Station WBIR reports it was the second time Purkey had been found on the high school campus, with the first being Aug. 2. He was warned at that time “if he came onto the property again he would be charged with criminal trespassing,” the station reported.
News of the breach in security prompted anger on social media, including demands to know what steps were being taken to prevent it from happening again.
“The district is extremely lucky that this individual — who had once before been on the school property and warned to not return just days ago by the way — didn’t just do harm to the students or staff,” Jeremy Barkenhagen posted on Facebook page. “This could have ended very very differently and the district would be at fault.”
“We’re supposed to trust that our children (are) safe in your hands with no questions asked,” Semper Kensei wrote. “Even we, the parents, don’t let strangers in our home.”
“If he had bad intentions at all, he had plenty of opportunity,” Alyse Emery said.
This story was originally published August 16, 2021 at 3:44 PM with the headline "School buses mistakenly take 29-year-old man to Tennessee high school, officials say."