This is one of those stories where you need multiple news sources to piece what happened together. First is ABC News which notes the attackers said “you have to kill the polar bear” in regards to the white bus driver, polar bear being slang for white people. Story makes no mention of the race of the attackers.

Via ABC News:

A bus driver in Dayton, Ohio, survived a shooting Monday, thanks to a religious book in his shirt pocket that stopped two bullets, authorities said.

“This is almost unheard of for us,” Greater Dayton Regional Transit Authority Executive Director Mark Donaghy said in a statement. “The last time we had a gun incident involving a bus was almost a decade ago.”

The bus driver, Rick Waggoner, 49, is recovering and is doing well, Donaghy said.

Police said Waggoner, who was shot at 5:07 a.m. Monday, would not have survived if the book, a devotional book titled “The Message,” wasn’t in his pocket, according to local ABC affiliate WKEF.

“I had a book in my pocket – at first I thought it had went through, but it just feels like I’ve been hit by a sledgehammer in the chest, and I’ve been cut on the arm,” Wagoner told the 911 dispatcher, WKEF reported.

Police said the victim was shot twice in the chest, once in the hip, and also stabbed in the arm.

Waggoner started his morning route along Lakeview Avenue and Lakeside Drive but then stopped at the side of the road because the bus broke down, WKEF reported.

Three male suspects, possibly juveniles, approached him, police said.

Waggoner told police that he heard a suspect say that “if you want to be all the way in the club, you have to kill the polar bear.”

Waggoner scuffled with the suspects and took the gun and knife away from them, police said. Waggoner shot at them as they fled but he wasn’t sure if he hit any of them, WKEF reported.

Second is from the Dayton Daily News which notes the attackers are black.

Via DDN:

Wagoner described the attackers as young black males, likely in their late teens. He said they fled in a dark-colored 1990s model Ford. No arrests have been made.

According to a police report, Wagoner told investigators he believed the shooting may have been a gang initiation. He said he heard one of the suspects tell another to kill him “if you want to be all the way in the club.”

HT: Karen