The story behind that crazy Jamaica Ave school bus video
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A still from a viral hoax video that appeared to show an angry school bus driver throwing what appeared to be a small child off a bus on Jamaica Avenue. Video still from Instagram.
By Jonathan Sperling
Pedestrians — and hundreds of thousands of social media users — watched in horror Tuesday as an enraged bus driver dragged what appeared to be a young child out of a yellow school bus and threw him onto the sidewalk along Jamaica Avenue.
“Get off the freakin’ bus. Get off the bus bro,” the driver screams, as he throws a plastic toy out of the vehicle, drags the child down the bus stairs and tosses him onto sidewalk near 160th Street. Bystanders tend to the supposed child, who pulls down his scarf to reveal that he’s actually a short adult.
But the bus driver recorded in the video isn’t actually a bus driver. The child tossed off of the bus isn’t actually a child. And the person who captured it all on camera wasn’t just a random bystander.
That’s because the video was actually the work of viral prankster and comedian Daniel Jean, who racked up nearly a quarter of a million views on the video on his Instagram. The original video had 5.8 million views as of Wednesday afternoon nd made “Jamaica Ave” a surprise trending topic as social media users wondered what just happened.
It’s not clear why Jean chose Jamaica Avenue for the stunt — through the street does offer a convenient bus lane. He hasn’t yet responded to a message sent to him by an Eagle reporter Wednesday
In a behind-the-scenes video posted on YouTube, Jean can be seen practicing for the stunt with the unidentified “child” who actually appears to be a man with dwarfism. Immediately before the prank, Jean films himself driving around Jamaica, trying “find a spot where there’s more people.”
It’s not the first time Jean’s antics have gone viral — nor is it the first time he’s dressed up as a bus driver on video. In 2018, he tossed what appeared to be one of his bus passengers into a fountain in Midtown. The “victim” was actually Zeeshan Ali Saroya, a friend of Jean’s.
Jean later told the Daily News that he and Saroya would “love to get our own show.
