Daily Star
It was the end of another ordinary day at elementary school for a bus full of children on a July day in 1976.
But they soon became victims in the largest kidnapping in the history of the United States.
At around 4pm on July 15, a school bus with 26 children was hijacked by three armed gunmen, wearing pantyhose over their faces, as they headed home from the Dairyland Elementary School in Chowchilla, California.
The children and their school bus driver were transferred to vans and were driven for nearly 12 torturous hours before being buried alive inside a truck trailer underground.
Inside the vans, the kidnappers had constructed makeshift jail cells by installing wood panelling and even painting the windows.
Survivor, Larry Park said: “As a 6-year-old … the only way that I can describe this darkness is that it was trying to get me.
“The kidnappers sped off with the children caged in their mobile prisons.”
Another survivor, Jennifer Hyde added: “And I felt like I was an animal going to the slaughterhouse.
Around that time, Jennifer and Jeff’s mom, Joan Brown, came home from work to an empty house.”
Once hidden in the dark under a quarry in Livermore, the kids were held hostage for another 16 hours before they made a harrowing escape.
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