A Mesa school bus went up in flames this week just minutes after the last student got off the bus.
The driver had just dropped off his last student from Taylor Junior High after school Monday when the fire started, according to a school district spokeswoman. No one was hurt.
Video captured by Blakeland Lazcano shows black smoke billowing from the back of the bus.
Lazcano said he saw the burning bus, near Hampton Avenue and Higley Road, on his way home from work. He said he alerted the bus driver after he and another person saw the gas tank was “leaking fire.”
Helen Hollands, a spokeswoman for Mesa Public Schools, said parents were not informed of the fire.
The bus was a full-sized 84-passenger International AmTran.
This is the second Mesa bus destroyed by fire in the last three years. Another Mesa school bus, carrying special needs students, caught fire in 2014. No one was injured.
An Arizona Republic investigation in 2016 found that almost 3 out of 10 Arizona school buses have a major defect, resulting in a failure of state safety inspections.
Records on Mesa's bus inspections were not immediately available.