Man Honored for Role in Bus Driver’s Arrest
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday honored a Simi Valley man for alerting police to the erratic driving of a school bus driver who was arrested on suspicion of drunk driving before he could pick up 57 children from an Encino elementary school.
The supervisors presented a scroll to Glen Hayes, 41, who said he was driving on the Hollywood Freeway in January when he saw a bus driver weaving across the lanes at speeds up to 70 m.p.h. Hayes followed the bus, which was carrying no passengers, to Lanai Road Elementary School in Encino, where he used his car phone to call police.
The bus driver, Harold Keith Lone, an employee of Laidlaw Transit, was charged with drunk driving after a breath test showed that he had a blood-alcohol level of 0.27%, police said.
Authorities said Lone had five previous drunk-driving convictions and had applied for a bus driver’s license using an alias.
In response to the incident, the state Department of Justice, the California Highway Patrol and the Department of Motor Vehicles agreed to speed up fingerprint checks and stop issuing temporary school bus drivers’ permits before background checks.
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