The U.S. Army’s largest basic training facility is located in Columbia, South Carolina, and that’s where Army trainee Jovan Collazo left on Thursday in his training clothes with rifle in hand. Collazo “ran off post and escaped,” according to a press conference given by Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott, carrying his rifle. He was arrested the same day after boarding a school bus with his gun in hand and taking the driver and 18 children hostage.
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“He told the bus driver he didn’t want to hurt anybody; he wanted him to drive him to the next town,” Lott said, according to HuffPost.
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Authorities were notified by several bystanders that a man was standing on a nearby interstate trying to flag down cars. He then moved to a bus stop, and boarded the bus with students who had been waiting there to go to Forest Lake Elementary School.
The 23-year-old’s gun was unloaded, and Commanding Brig. Gen. Milford H. Beagle Jr. said during the press conference that he was likely carrying it to disguise his departure from the base, as it would have been noticed if he left it behind.
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After boarding the buss, Collazo yelled at the driver to go, but he was only on board with the group for six minutes. Students began calling and texting their parents, and asking the Army trainee if he had plans to hurt them. He ordered the driver to stop and allowed everyone to get off, before driving away himself. He went a few miles, then abandoned it with his gun inside.
From there, Collazo searched the neighborhood, seemingly for clothes. He was located by deputies and then arrested. Those six minutes, however, have led to an enormous number of charges, that include 19 counts of kidnapping, counts of carjacking, plus possessing a weapon on school property, armed robbery and weapons possession during a violent crime. He will likely be facing disciplinary charges from the Army, who do not like it when people abandon their post without leave and take weapons as they go.
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“He was a very quiet individual, hailed from New Jersey … and we assessed that he was just trying to make an attempt to go back home,” Beagle said. “here is nothing that leads us to believe … that this had anything to do with harming others, harming himself or anything that links to any other type of nefarious activity.”
Collazo was only in his third week of basic training, and this incident made Beagle aware of a hole in their “accountability process” for new trainees.
*First Published: May 8, 2021, 6:59 am
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