PANAMA CITY BEACH — Deputies have arrested a 12-year-old boy after an early morning joy ride across the county in a school bus. 
 
 Employees of the Wal-Mart at 10270 Front Beach Road notified a Bay County deputy of a school bus awkwardly maneuvering through the parking lot at about 5 a.m. Tuesday, according to a news release. Though not causing a safety concern, it seemed strange the driver could not quite figure out how to park. 
 
 “It was just odd the way they were driving it,” said Roy Hoover, a Wal-Mart employee. “He was having a hard time parking it, like he’d never drove one before.” 
 
 When the deputy pulled behind bus 746 with his emergency lights on, young driver Michael Wade Propst stepped out. He initially said a man named “ Constantine ” asked him to get gas for the bus. 
 
 Deputies later discovered the school bus had been taken overnight from a residence at 508 Maine Ave. in Parker, and driven nearly flawlessly across Bay County to the Front Beach Road Wal-Mart. The actual bus driver apparently had left the keys in the bus, and Propst admitted to taking it by himself, police reports stated. The child’s motive is unknown. 
 
 No disciplinary action was taken against the bus driver Tuesday, but Superintendent of Schools Bill Husfelt said he plans to meet with the bus driver today. 
 
 Deputies contacted the child’s mother, who asked deputies to talk to him “since she was not having any impact on him,” an incident report said. 

 PANAMA CITY — The driver of a county school bus has been suspended after a 12-year-old boy found the keys in the parked bus and took it on a joy ride, school officials said Wednesday. 
 
 Bay District Schools Superintendent Bill Husfelt said the actual driver, 28-year-old Brandon Curtis, has been suspended for two weeks after bus 746 was taken from the driver’s Maine Avenue home in Parker early Tuesday morning. Michael Wade Propst, 12, was found driving the bus at about 5 a.m. more than 14 miles away in a Panama City Beach Wal-Mart parking lot at 10270 Front Beach Road. 
 
 No collisions or injuries have been linked to the incident. 
 
 Curtis admitted to leaving the keys in the ignition and the bus parked in a place susceptible to theft, Husfelt said. More severe disciplinary action was not taken mostly because of Curtis’ clean employee record, he added. 
 
 Curtis “has not had any other disciplinary actions in the past and he admitted he made a mistake,” Husfelt said. “We’re all just very grateful the student wasn’t hurt and no one else was hurt. This has been a valuable lesson in securing our buses.” 
 
 Propst made the trek along U.S. Business 98 and over the Hathaway Bridge without tipping off law enforcement along the way. Despite his apparently graceful driving, Propst faces serious charges, authorities said. 
 
 He has been charged with grand theft of an item worth more than $100,000 and felony criminal mischief. He also is charged with grand theft for a missing student recognition device worth about $2,000, and officers could be looking into other charges against the juvenile. 

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– Employees at a Florida Walmart thought there was something weird about the school bus driving around their parking lot at 5am Tuesday. Its driver seemed to be having trouble parking, and the awkward way it was maneuvering made it seem "like he'd never drove one before," one employee explains to the News Herald. So they called police, and a deputy pulled over the bus ... to find a 12-year-old boy driving it. Michael Wade Propst initially said someone asked him to fill up the bus with gas, but later admitted he took it overnight from a residence and drove it 14 miles across Panama City Beach to the Walmart. Deputies arrested him. It's not clear why Propst took the bus, but it is clear how: The actual 28-year-old driver apparently left the keys inside. (Not surprisingly, he's been suspended, the News Herald notes; the local superintendent calls the incident "a valuable lesson in securing our buses.") As for Propst, he's been charged with grand theft of an item worth more than $100,000 and felony criminal mischief, reports the Jackson County Floridian. But a school security officer is nonetheless impressed with the boy's driving skills: "You have to take a weeklong course to operate a bus like that," yet Propst managed to drive it on a highway and over a bridge without eliciting any suspicion. He may have hit something, though: Police say they're investigating an 8-foot-long scrape of white paint on one side of the bus.