Batavia school bus driver praised

BATAVIA, N.Y. (WIVB) -

A Batavia school bus driver is getting plenty of praise for convincing a young child to surrender a loaded gun.

Batavia bus driver James Henning said, "Ya know, I've been called a hero and everything. I don't think I'm so much of a hero."

James Henning says he was only doing his job Wednesday when a seven-year-old boy sitting behind him said "my little brother has a gun."

Henning said, "So, I parked and got up and I looked over to him and I said 'Look, if you don't wanna be in bigger trouble, you gotta give me whatever ya got in your pocket.'"

The six-year-old boy handed over a purple sack with a .22 handgun in it.

Henning said, "Once it hit my hand, I knew it was real, and then I knew at least I had control of the situation."

He told the twenty other kids on the bus to calm down as they waited for police to arrive. The boy told Henning he found it under his mother's bed.

Henning said, "I was trying to get out of him what he was gonna do with it, but he started getting teary eyed and didn't want to talk too much, and then they pulled him off the bus."

The boy's father and older brother both face weapons and child endangerment charges. They don't live with the boy, but police say they admitted they both handled the gun in the mother's home and knew the unregistered gun was there.

Henning said, "You really question yourself what's wrong with these people nowadays. Where's the responsibility for the parents, the adults."

Police are still trying to figure out whose gun it actually was. The boy's mother was not charged, but the investigation continues.