Teen with bus obsession, steals bus & collects fairs

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Anyone spot this in the news?

Richie Davis (15 years old) is very very obsessed with buses. He made his own bus drivers uniform (I heard this on Sky News) and identification badge, and he stole a bus from a bus garage. He then drove the stolen bus on a bus route as normal and took two fairs. The passengers wondered why he looked so young, but he drove the bus very well.

Richie said ....

"I drove that bus better than most of the LYNX drivers could," the teen told a deputy after his arrest. "There isn't a scratch on it. I know how to start it, drive it, lower it, raise it."

Richie is now is jail, and this is the second time he has stolen a bus. He was serving probation for stealing a bus in January!

http://www.local6.com/news/10186280/detail.html

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/LegalCenter/story?id=2615501

No mention of Asperger's, but it is likely Richie has Asperger's. I wish authorities could deal with Richie imaginatively, allow him to drive a bus under supervision once a month in agreement that he does not steal buses or impersonate bus employees. This wont happen, and so Richie might end up like Darius McCollum, who has a Train obsession. Darius has spent half his life in prison.

Link: "The boy who loved transit: how the system failed an obsession"

Okay, I know it's bad that he broke the law and everything, but this is really, really awesome and I sort of applaud this boy for following his dream.

Having AS doesn't mean you have no sense of right and wrong. I'm sure this boy knew that he was breaking the law, and that should be punished, regardless of his driving skills and obsession.

No, but having AS means you may have a sense of right or wrong that's different to the social norms; you'll find that those with AS who "steal" buses and trains, don't see that they're doing anything wrong for they mean no harm, and they'll assume that everyone else sees it the same way they do.

The boy with AS who "stole" the train is an old case study of someone with AS doing something objectively wrong, but genuinely not knowing that he did anything wrong.

Whether the person in the article has AS or not is beside the point.

Yeah, some autistic people take something without paying and though it's explained to them, they do not consider that it is theft. Or they understand that they can't just take it. And that's got nothing to do with IQ score too.

In other matters I realise the same about me. That there is a great unintentional difference between what I know/was told to memorise and what I do and think I can do.

Impersonating a city employee, stealing city property, driving w/o a license ...

But all is forgiven 'cause the kid is Aspie with an obsession.

I'm beginning to understand the sentiment behind the Michael Savage tirade. Sure, it was a relatively harmless incident this time, but what happens when another Aspie kid tries to impersonate another professional person?

While I would agree with that if this was the first time it happened, it was mentioned that this is the second time he had done such and that he was doing probation for the first. That means that he did go to court. He would have known why he was there. That means he must know that others do not consider it to be "right", regardless of what he feels.

Even if the kid doesn’t think his actions were malicious they were extremely disruptive and probably dangerous to the public. It’s sad that he has to go to jail but I don’t see what else law enforcement could do since nothing could stop him from doing it again after the first offense. It isn't about punishing the kid, but sending a message and protecting the public.

I don’t think you can blame Aspergers Syndrome for that kind of behavior either. Not all aspies are impulsive like that. I’m thinking he is probably just a really head strong kid that would be getting into trouble even if he was NT.

Agreed. I think people need to ask, before going with the idea of feeding the guy's interests, "What would happen if everyone realized they could do this and get positive results?". Rules in society are there for a reason and not to be broken.

Agreed.

I used to pick up rulers in school and put them all in a bag. I had no idea it was stealing, although at one point several kids came up around me and started chanting "THIEF! THIEF! THIEF!" (not to get anyone else's attention, just mine). I was 11 years old and that was actually one of the peaks of my ability to pass.



Very very similar here.

The memorized words don't connect to actions at all, nor can I even remember them if they're not specifically triggered the right way. (Was just explaining this to a staff person who was surprised by the contrast between my detailed long-term/triggered memory and my pretty awful short term memory and intentional recall.)

Heather,

You'll also find that it's common for people with AS to ignore said laws/rules due to the AS itself (even if they know them, and have been caught before); "rules are for others" and "I'm not doing anything wrong" [because to them, they really mean no harm], are widely known amongst professionals as traits that are common to AS. This isn't to say that one can escape "punishment" due to such, but said punishment should be tailored to the individual.

It's actually sad, especially the case concerning the man with AS and the NYC subway; he's probably unable to get a job there due to not meeting the requirements, or being unable to interact with the staff, but he'd know more about trains and their operation in the subway than most of the people working there.

Society should be fostering this obsession, but instead, the lone nail gets hammered down in the face of the majority, its way of socializing, and its paperwork.

Ignorance of the law has never been an excuse. The law is not "optional."

I'm getting really sick of the myth that we're all obsessed with buses and bus schedules.

This board suggests that a more accurate stereotype would be that we're all obsessed with anime, gaming, and computers. But that stereotype would annoy me too because I don't have any interest in those things.

Although I kind of do like trains . . .

That may be, but I still think it would take a lot of nerve to do something like steal a bus (not once but twice).



He probably thought he was more knowledgeable and could do a better job than the hired bus drivers and that entitled him to break the law. I’m pretty sure that’s what he was thinking. It’s sad because now he doesn’t have a chance of being hired as a bus driver when he gets older because nobody’s going to trust him. It may be his AS led to him not being able to see the consequences and the fact that nobody will trust him anymore.

Irrelevant and totally beside the point.