I remember the 1976 Chowchilla incident, living in California at the time--
Chowchilla was launched into national headlines on July 15, 1976, when 26 children and an adult bus driver were kidnapped from their bus. The kidnappers hid the bus in a drainage slough, and drove the children and bus driver around in two vans for 11 hours before forcing them to climb into a hole in the ground. After passing through the hole, the children and their driver found themselves trapped in the interior of a buried moving van. Although they did not know it, their place of confinement was in a quarry located in Livermore, California.
Local farmer and part-time bus driver Ed Ray, with help from some of the boys, stacked the 14 mattresses that were in the van. This enabled some of the older children to reach the opening at the top of the truck, which had been covered with a metal lid and weighed down with two 100-pound industrial batteries. They wedged the lid open with a stick, Ray moved the batteries, and then they removed the remainder of the debris blocking the entrance. After 16 hours underground, they emerged and walked to the guard shack at the entrance to the quarry. The guard alerted the authorities, all the victims were pronounced in good condition, and they returned home to find that the mass media had descended on the town.
--more--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_Chowchilla_kidnappingAnd the after effects--
After Effects
Three years after the kidnapping, a study of 23 of the children by Dr. Lenore C. Terr of UC San Francisco concluded that they had been traumatized by the ordeal, resulting in panic attacks, nightmares of kidnappings leading to their deaths, and personality changes. Twenty of the children were afraid of being kidnapped again, and 21 were afraid of such things as "cars, the dark, the wind, the kitchen, mice, dogs and hippies." [8] Eighteen months after the kidnapping, one of the older male victims shot a Japanese tourist with a BB gun when the tourist's car broke down in front of his home in what Dr. Terr described as "a dangerously inappropriate episode of (his need for) heroism." [9] Many of the children continued to report symptoms of trauma at least 25 years after the kidnapping, including substance abuse and depression. According to Dr. Terr, a number have spent time in prison for "doing something controlling to somebody else." [10]
I thought the Chowchilla incident would be the most horrendous attack on children I would ever see and that it would be an isolated even in our history. Now, it's becoming a regular occurrence with children the target of madmen with guns.
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