12-year-old takes school bus for joy ride

PANAMA CITY BEACH — Deputies have arrested a 12-year-old boy after an early morning joy ride across the county in a school bus.

Employees of the Wal-Mart at 10270 Front Beach Road notified a Bay County deputy of a school bus awkwardly maneuvering through the parking lot at about 5 a.m. Tuesday. Though not causing a safety concern, it seemed strange the driver could not quite figure out how to park.

“It was just odd the way they were driving it,” said Roy Hoover, a Wal-Mart employee. “He was having a hard time parking it, like he’d never drove one before.”

When the deputy pulled behind bus 746 with his emergency lights on, young driver Michael Wade Propst stepped out. He initially said a man named “Constatine” asked him to get gas for the bus.

Deputies later discovered the school bus had been taken overnight from a residence at 508 Maine Ave. in Parker, and driven nearly flawlessly across Bay County to the Panama City Beach Wal-Mart. The actual bus driver had apparently left the keys in the bus, and Propst admitted to taking it by himself, police reports stated. The child’s motive is unknown.

The bus had not been reported stolen.

From the on-board camera footage, Propst seemed like a skilled driver, according to Bay District School’s chief security officer Mike Jones.

“You have to take a week long course to operate a bus like that,” Jones said. “Yet at 12 he was able to drive one, and he didn’t just take it around the block.”

Propst made the 14-mile trek, which winds along Bus. 98 and over the Hathaway Bridge, without tipping off law enforcement along the way. Despite his apparently graceful driving, Propst is facing serious charges for the incident.

He has been charged with grand theft of an item worth more than $100,000 and felony criminal mischief. He also is charged with grand theft for a missing student recognition device worth about $2,000. And officers could be looking into other charges against the juvenile.

Though Propst told deputies he did not remember hitting anything, BCSO is investigating an 8-foot-long scrape of white paint transferred onto the right side of the bus.

“We don’t know if that occurred before he got the bus, but there’s a potential he ran into something white,” said Major Tommy Ford of BCSO.

BCSO officials were unsure of the paint’s origin as of Tuesday evening.

Propst was arrested and taken to the Department of Juvenile Justice for processing.