A Colorado school bus driver is in trouble after dumping 40 elementary school-aged children on the side of the road and running away; students claimed he bragged about owning a gun and threatened to “face consequences” if they didn’t shut up.

The debacle occurred Monday evening in Castle Rock, about 30 miles south of Denver, when children from Clear Sky Elementary School boarded their buses at the end of the day to find a substitute driver behind the wheel.

Students immediately say something is wrong.

“He wouldn’t let us leave school until we stopped talking,” said 10-year-old Caitlyn Zavadil He told 9NewsHe explained that they sat in the parking lot before leaving well behind schedule.

“He finally left and was skipping all the kid stops, and by all the kids I mean all the kids,” the girl said. “And when he was driving and missed our stops, it felt like we were being kidnapped.”

And meanwhile the driver became more and more hostile.

“He was threatening us by saying that he used to be in the military and had a gun in his hand. And if we do something wrong, there will be consequences,” Zavadil KDVR was told.

After passing the usual stops, the driver pulled over at a busy intersection and asked the children to get off the bus. So they did; They fled up the street before the driver sped away and abandoned them as the night became dark and cold.

It worried parents to see dozens of frightened school children making a fuss.

“As these kids were running from the bus, running through traffic, scattering everywhere, it felt like there was an active shooter on the bus,” said parent Savanna Keisling, who arrived shortly after to rescue. daughter

He then noticed Zavadil and his younger sister crying—the girls were stranded at least three kilometers from their home without their phones and didn’t know how to get back—and offered to take them home.

“A lot of the kids were crying and hysterical because they missed their stops and didn’t know what was going on,” parent Tony Martin, whose daughter was also returned home by a classmate’s parents, told KDVR.

“When she came home she was hysterical and traumatized. “She was crying uncontrollably because she said, ‘I felt like I was being kidnapped,'” Martin said.

Other parents said their children came home terrified, including one who feared the bus driver would break into their home and shoot them.

The Douglas County School District said the bus driver has been placed on leave while the Castle Rock Police Department investigates the situation.

“We are in contact with the families of 40 students who were dropped off at a place other than the regular bus stop after school yesterday. This is extremely concerning as the safety of our students is always our priority,” the school district said in a statement.