Twenty-eight year old Deavonta Belton allegedly decided to drive his own bus route earlier this week, stepping into a MET bus at the MET Transit Downtown Transfer Station at 220 N. 25th St. in Downtown Billings. Kellyn Nelson and one other passenger were waiting on the bus while the bus driver took a short break. Nelson alleges that Belton then climbed onto the bus and introduced himself as their new driver before taking off towards the Heights. After the bus took a wrong turn, Nelson said she realized the bus had been “hijacked.” “The individual who was operating the bus appeared to know how to operate a bus,” said MET Transit manager Rusty Logan. “I’m not sure if he had been trained in it or not. You’ve kind of got to be familiar with the vehicle before you can actually get it to drive away.”
It probably wasn’t much of a shock that MET Transit buses are all able to be tracked via GPS, so the Billings Police Department and the Yellowstone County Sheriff’s Office were able to converge on its location after around five minutes and easily got Belton to pull over near the Metra after being blocked in between Airport Rd. and Bench Blvd in the Heights.
Both passengers were unharmed and Belton was taken into custody. As the wild incident came to a close, Logan said that they were “very fortunate the situation was not more severe than it was. We’re definitely going to be taking the steps necessary to ensure that this doesn’t happen again.”
Belton is currently sitting in the Yellowstone County Detention Facility on a $51,000 bond for felony motor vehicle theft, two counts of unlawful restraint, possession of paraphernalia, and two counts of theft. As of press time there is no clear motive for why he decided to take a joy ride on a city bus.
