A man with a violent past snuck onto a stopped school bus transporting Alvord Unified students on Wednesday, Oct. 1, but he did not harm the six special needs students and was quickly arrested, the Riverside Police Department said Thursday.
The man, identified as 36-year-old Bryan Keith Lofton, entered through the emergency exit door at the back of the bus, sat down, buckled himself in and asked to be taken to a hospital, said Officer Ryan Railsback, a Police Department spokesman.
Lofton was instead driven to Robert Presley Detention Center in Riverside, where he was booked on suspicion of trespassing and violating parole. He was being held without the possibility of bail.
It was unclear on Thursday whether the emergency door is typically left unlocked. The bus was stopped at a red light at Magnolia Avenue and Jones Street, Railsback said. Police were called, and the driver and another adult were escorting the children off the bus when officers arrived.
Alvord Unified School District officials did not return a message left Thursday seeking comment. There was no mention of the incident on the district’s social media feeds.
“A deranged homeless man broke into my daughter’s school bus this morning in the Alvord district,” a parent wrote on social media Wednesday. “When is our leadership going to start arresting these people and getting them off our streets?”
Lofton has been arrested, over and over again. His rap sheet on the Riverside County Superior Court website fills a computer screen.
Lofton’s most recent conviction was in 2022, when a judge in Banning sentenced him to serve four years in state prison after a jury found him guilty of armed robbery. The judge added one year for using a deadly weapon — a knife — during the robbery, Riverside County court records show. The four years were on the low end of the sentencing range.
Lofton was not eligible for probation because he had a prior felony strike. Lofton appealed that conviction but was denied a new trial.
He was convicted of felony burglary in 2013 in Riverside County as well as a series of misdemeanors in the county between 2012 and 2021, according to court records: possession of a stun gun, driving on a license that was suspended or revoked because of a DUI/drugs conviction, presenting false identification to a peace officer, petty theft, inflicting corporal injury on a spouse or cohabitant and violating a stay-away order from the court.
Alvord serves about 17,000 students at 23 schools in Riverside, Corona and parts of unincorporated Riverside County.
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