Thieves Siphon Gas From School Buses

By Lori Fullbright, The News On 6

SAND SPRINGS, OK -- Thieves steal gasoline from several Sand Springs school buses. Thieves have hit the Sand Springs bus yard three times in the past three weeks and the school system is sick of it.

Thieves have taken keys, copper, air conditioning parts, but this time, it takes the cake. They siphoned off around 200 gallons of gasoline from the school buses. They are the buses that carry children every day.

About 60 Sand Springs buses head out of the yard every day, some running two, three or four routes. They haul more than 6,000 children between home and school every weekday.

Some thieves didn't see these buses as vital transportation for kids last weekend. Instead, they saw them as a source of free gasoline.

"We came in Monday morning and the buses started heading out. We realized the buses weren't starting properly. They had totally drained the tanks in some cases," said Sean Parker, Assistant Director of Transportation.

It had to take them some time to siphon around 250 gallons of gas from a row of buses that were parked near the fence. Tire tracks show they pulled their truck behind the fence to haul away their take.

There's a section of fence that doesn't have any barbed wire on top. They probably climbed over there and after siphoning the gas, they cut a hole in a fence and that's where they handed through the containers of gas.

That loss was at least $1,000 and you couple that with the other recent thefts and it really adds up, especially for a district that is already tight on money.

"What it really comes down to is a lot of people believe schools get gas for a cheap price and I think when they steal gas, they don't think it costs us much. To be honest, it does," said Parker.

The district is beefing up security at the facility in hopes of preventing more costly break-ins in the future.

A couple of the buses had scorch marks on them, like the thieves were smoking while they were siphoning the gas and had a couple of flash fires.

An explosion or fire, would have been devastating for the district and the kids who depend on the buses to get to school, not to mention, probably deadly for the thieves.