Students, Citizens Thwart School Bus Hijacking
August 27, 2009 by national
Filed under Incident Reports
Quick thinking by a dozen teenagers may have avoided an apparent school bus hijacking from turning tragic, said witnesses. A man boarded a bus as it stopped at Boulevard and Burroughs Road and tried to take control of it, school district and Atlanta police officials said. The suspect briefly fought with the bus driver, forcing her out of the seat and taking control of the vehicle.
At about 4 p.m. Thursday afternoon, an Atlanta Public Schools bus ran off of Boulevard Road after Arris Pitmon, 23, forced his way onto the bus transporting Forrest Hills Academy students and began attacking the driver and a student.
Pitmon boarded the bus as it stopped at Boulevard and Burroughs Road, school district and Atlanta police officials said.
He briefly fought with the driver, forcing her out of the seat and taking control of the bus. He attempted to drive the bus, but then went after the driver who had gone to the back of the bus with the students.
As other students escaped through the back emergency exit, one-by-one, along with the bus driver, a 16 year old male tried to take control of the steering wheel and fought with Pitmon.
Eventually, the bus jumped a sidewalk, slid down a hill and crashed into a fence.
After Minneapolis, FBI Eyes Atlanta’s Somalis
June 25, 2009 by national
Filed under Homeland Security News
In this small town on the edge of Atlanta, the FBI and local law enforcement are looking out for an alarming kind of crime: radical Islamist terrorists potentially trying to recruit the town’s young Somali-Americans to fight a war in Africa.
There is terrorist recruitment taking place already in Minnesota, said Clarkston police chief Tony J. Scipio. That’s why his department and the FBI are looking for anything similar in the Somali-American community here in Clarkston.
In Minneapolis, as many as 20 young men have been reported missing from their homes since last fall. They are thought to have been lured into the ranks of al-Shabaab in Somalia. That group got a terrorist designation from the U.S. State Department, which ties it to al-Qaeda, bombings, assassinations and attacks on peacekeepers. A powerful faction fighting Somalia’s transitional government, al-Shabaab’s agenda is extremely strict Sharia law.
To fight potential recruiters, the Atlanta FBI has spent the last several months in what the agent-in-charge called an “outreach” program to Clarkston Somali-Americans, including mosque visits and community meetings.
