It’s the feel-good story of the year — or at least the year’s first five months.
In South Carolina, a man named Jovan Collazo, carrying an Army-issued rifle, hijacked a school bus. (This isn’t the feel-good part.)
Collazo wanted to go home. It’s unclear why he didn’t just thumb a ride or take a bus the old-fashioned way. But, whatever; criminals are not always the most rational actors.
Bus driver Kenneth Corbin says that 18 students, some in kindergarten, were scattered throughout the vehicle when the hijacker got on board. Captor Collazo decided that the best thing would be to group everybody toward the front so that he could keep a better eye on them.
Big mistake.
The regrouping laid the groundwork for what the UK Independent calls “incessant kindergarten questions” about Collazo’s background, motives, and intentions.
Rattled by the interrogation, he soon brought the bus to a halt, ordered everybody off, and tried to drive the bus himself. Not long after, he was arrested.
According to Corbin, Collazo “sensed more questions coming and I guess something clicked in his mind and he said, ‘enough is enough already.’”
That’s one way to escape a kidnapper. The strategy may not always work, obviously, but we can be glad it worked in this case.
Parents, the next time your toddlers pummel you with metaphysical queries about the universe, try to indulge the budding philosophers.
Their expertise in the Socratic method may come in real handy one day.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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