Man pleads guilty to firing on school bus, wounding driver
Published 8:10 pm Monday, August 26, 2019
MINNEAPOLIS — A Minnesota man accused of shooting at a school bus on a snowy highway, wounding the driver, has pleaded guilty to first-degree assault.
Thirty-two-year-old Kenneth Lilly of St. Paul waived his self-defense claims Monday. He faces up to eight years in prison.
According to the complaint, bus driver Thomas Benson was trying to merge onto an interstate near downtown Minneapolis during a snowstorm on Feb. 5. The bus scraped Lilly’s car, although Benson was unaware.
Lilly, who was wearing his security guard uniform, pulled a handgun and fired five shots into the bus windshield, wounding the driver’s arm and grazing his head. A girl on the bus was not hurt.
The shooting left Benson deaf in one ear and unable to continue working as a bus driver due to nerve damage in his hand.