COLUMBIA, S.C.—An Army trainee who left a base in South Carolina without permission last year and briefly held a group of children hostage at gunpoint aboard a school bus has been found not guilty by reason of insanity.
The decision agreed to by prosecutors, defense attorneys and a judge means the 25-year-old New Jersey man will be sent to a state mental hospital for four additional months of treatment.
The trainee left Fort Jackson near Columbia where he was in basic training in May 2021 with an unloaded rifle. He first tried to flag down cars on Interstate 77, then boarded the school bus in a nearby neighborhood, investigators said….