Mostly cloudy skies this evening will become partly cloudy after midnight. Slight chance of a shower throughout the evening. Low 49F. Winds light and variable..
Tonight
Mostly cloudy skies this evening will become partly cloudy after midnight. Slight chance of a shower throughout the evening. Low 49F. Winds light and variable.
A Greenwood County School District 50 bus driver was relieved of his duties and arrested after being under the influence while on the job, authorities said Friday.
Bennie Lee Thomas, 78, of 101 Hickory Lane, Greenwood, was arrested Friday and charged with unlawfully placing a child at risk of or cause harm or willfully abandon the child and reckless driving. A booking photo was not immediately available.
“On Jan. 31, there was a personnel issue with a District 50 bus driver on an elementary bus,” District 50 spokesperson Johnathan Graves told the Index-Journal. “The driver was removed from the bus and the route was completed by another driver.”
According to an incident report, District 50 contacted the Greenwood County Sheriff’s Office about the episode Tuesday afternoon.
A bus monitor contacted an administrator at 3:10 p.m. Tuesday to report a suspicion that the driver of bus 17 was drunk, the report said. He had slurred speech, smelled strongly of alcohol and was driving erratically, the monitor reported. The driver also stopped the bus to talk about Valentine’s Day for 30 minutes.
The man denied being under the influence, an administrator told law enforcement, but the district had him undergo a drug and alcohol screening that revealed a blood-alcohol content of 0.18. The legal limit in South Carolina is 0.08.
Because deputies were notified afterward about the allegations and weren’t the ones who tested Thompson, he was not charged Friday with DUI, according to sheriff’s office spokesperson Josh Hood.
The administrator told deputies he took the man’s keys and badge so he couldn’t access school buses, then drove him home.
There were 32 students from Woodfields Elementary on the bus at the time, the report said. Thomas is no longer employed by District 50
