Jabbar Gibson was 20 years old and did not have a driver’s license. He lived in the Algiers neighborhood of New Orleans and had not evacuated when Katrina breached the levees.
On August 31, 2005, he found an abandoned school bus. The keys were still in it.
He filled it with people. Children, elderly people, neighbors who no longer expected help from anyone. In total, more than 70 people.
He set off for Houston. The trip that normally takes five and a half hours took him nearly thirteen, through flooded streets and destroyed roads.
Police stopped him on the way. They asked him to let the passengers off and hand over the keys. His mother, Bernice, intervened and got them to let them continue.
When the bus arrived at Houston’s Astrodome, already turned into a shelter, some reports say it arrived before several official buses.
Gibson was never charged for taking that vehicle.
No one gave him that bus. No one gave him permission. He decided that seventy lives could not wait any longer.
