Clayton County police are looking for a man who witnesses said pointed a rifle at a school bus near Hampton Monday morning.
The incident happened about 7 a.m. off Paladin Drive, Clayton County police spokesman Phong Nguyen said.
Nguyen said the witness told officers that he saw a man "crouched down in the backyard of a residence and pointing what appeared to be a rifle at a passing school bus."
The witness yelled at the man, "which caused the subject to drop the rifle and flee on foot from the location," Nguyen said, adding that a rifle was recovered.
Douglas Hendrix, chief human resource officer for Clayton County Schools, said another witness pursued the man, but stopped when the man began firing another weapon at him.
“The school district and law enforcement are taking every precaution to make sure students are safe,” Hendrix said.
Nguyen asked that anyone with information on the incident call investigators at 770-477-3648.
“We really don’t have any information to say there was an individual target," Hendrix said."We just know somebody for whatever reason wanted to point a gun at a school bus. That of course heightens our alert.”
The buses serve Kemp Elementary, Kemp Primary and Lovejoy High School.
For all this week, there will be a high police presence and buses are being escorted in the morning and evening, Hendrix said.
“We want to say thank you to those in the community who actually saw this situation and got involved,” he said. “It is a community incident.”
He said he has no reason to say a student was a target.
“It does seem to be a bus was in his vision when he decided to raise the gun up,” Hendrix said.
Staff writer Nancy Badertscher contributed to this article.
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