Bus Driver Saves Kidnapped Boy: Child’s Abduction Foiled By Quick Thinking California VTA Employee


A California bus driver is being lauded as a hero after he saved a young boy who had been kidnapped nearly an hour earlier from the Milpitas Public Library, in Milpitas, California.

The 3-year-old was at the library with his mother when he was kidnapped by 23-year-old Alfonso David Edington. Upon learning of the boy’s kidnapping, officers and library officials responded without haste and closed the library to incoming and outgoing traffic, while putting all authorities and public transit drivers on alert to keep a look out for a young boy, wearing plaid shorts and red shoes, and the suspected kidnapper, wearing a black hoodie.

About an hour after the initial kidnapping, Santa Clara Valley Transit Authority bus driver Tim Watson noticed a crying young boy on his bus, who happened to be sitting next to a man wearing a black hoodie. Not wanting to raise suspicion, the quick thinking Watson pulled the bus over and pretended to check the aisles for a missing green backpack.

“What I’m really trying to do is to get up without him knowing to look at the little boy. So sure enough, I see the plaid shorts and red shoes. That’s what really stuck out in my mind,” Watson said.

After returning to his seat, Watson than radioed police to tell them that he’d found the kidnapped boy, and that he would be stopping the bus at the Fremont train station — about 12 miles from where the child was kidnapped.

When Edington when to disembark with the child in tow, Watson wanted to give the police enough time to get into position.

“So I open my door one slowly, giving them time to get prepped and ready to go. I open up door two, the gentleman walks out calm, cool, collected as can be and they take him down on the spot.”

“The bus driver is a hero, an absolute hero,” Milpitas Police Chief Steve Pangelinan said of the way Watson’s sharp eye and quick thinking saved the boy from his kidnapper.

The child was reunited with his emotional parents at the Milpitas Police Station, and as for the hero bus driver, he just wanted to get home to hug his own kids.

“And that’s when my own kids came to mind and I just broke down. I couldn’t hold myself down. I just had to go inside the bus and reflect.”

Thanks to the quick thinking Tim Watson, who saved the boy from his kidnapper, both he and the boy’s parents will be hugging their children just a little bit tighter from now on.

[Image Credit: ABC7 News]

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