Bus driver pleads guilty in driving 35 kids while drunk on Fireball, MN court docs say

A bus driver accused of driving 35 children to a YMCA camp while drunk has pleaded guilty, Minnesota court documents show.

Patrick David Bullard, 49, was pulled over by Minnesota State Patrol officers in late August, after someone called 911 to report a charter bus weaving back and forth on U.S. Interstate 35, nearly crashing into a ditch, documents say.

Troopers spotted the bus as it swerved onto the shoulder and corrected itself, spewing a cloud of dust as it went. They switched on their lights, but Bullard didn’t seem to notice them until one trooper pulled up next to the driver’s side and activated an emergency siren.

On the bus, there were two adult chaperones and 35 children, all between 11 and 14 years old, documents said. Bullard was driving them to a YMCA camp.

Bullard seemed “dazed and disoriented,” troopers said, he had “glassy eyes, slurred speech and his motions were very slow and deliberate.”

As troopers spoke with him, the bus suddenly started to roll forward because he hadn’t put it in park, according to court documents.

He stepped out of the bus smelling of alcohol and performed several field sobriety tests, all of which indicated he was not sober, troopers said. Additionally, a preliminary breath test showed Bullard’s blood-alcohol level was .257, roughly 6 times the legal limit for someone operating a commercial vehicle, which includes buses.

Troopers found a handle of Fireball whiskey in a backpack belonging to Bullard, documents said.

The 1.75 mL bottle was two-thirds empty and a plastic cup in the driver seat cup holder was partially filled with a liquid that smelled like Fireball — a cup that Bullard was sipping from while driving, a chaperone later told investigators.

Troopers took Bullard into custody, documents said. He declined to take another breath test, telling police “because I don’t want to.”

Bullard recently pleaded guilty to DWI and was sentenced to a year in jail, documents filed Nov. 3 show. However, his jail sentence was stayed for a period of two years of supervised probation.

This story was originally published November 7, 2022 at 4:28 PM with the headline "Bus driver pleads guilty in driving 35 kids while drunk on Fireball, MN court docs say."