KANSAS CITY, Mo. (WDAF) – Stolen vehicles aren’t normally as conspicuous as they are in this story, but a Kansas City Chiefs party bus that has been missing since Monday still has not been recovered.
The theft happened just off E. 20th Street and Spruce Avenue in Kansas City.
During the past three years, the owner retrofitted the bus, turning it into an Arrowhead Stadium party wagon.
The vehicle, however, actually started out as a bus used for prisoner transport, a little ironic given it was stolen.
“So right here, you can see where it was parked straight ahead here. And you can see where they dragged it out,” Albert Castro, the bus’s owner, said. He pointed to the ground to show the tracks.
Castro said his bus is quite likely getting towed because the bars on its windows prevent easy access.
“And it only had like 70,000 miles on it cause all it did was take prisoners from Leeds to downtown and then bring them back,” Castro said.
“It had a back gate on it where the women, they took and they had to sit in the back. They locked them up. Then they let the men in,” Castro said.
“He knows more things than we even knew he knew how to do,” Britney Aguirre, Castro’s daughter, said.
“When I found out that it was a prison bus, I was like ‘Oh, OK,'” she said with a laugh.
She said everyone was impressed with its transformation.
“Brand new red leather interior – couch, chair, loveseat,” Castro said.
But now they are frustrated that the bus is missing. There have been some sightings on Facebook, the most recent at the Raytown Wal-Mart.
The family says the situation has been reported to the Kansas City Police Department. WDAF-TV has reached out for additional details.
Now the family is asking for the public’s help, keeping an eye out for the bus from 1979. It was a vehicle largely ignored until it was bought by Castro.
“I put gas in it, filled it up, put some new batteries in it. That thing fired right up, and I drove it home,” Castro said.
“When he walks through the room, everybody knows him. We used to have that growing up. ‘Oh my gosh. Here we go. Dad knows somebody else again,'” Aguirre said.
“I had a few guys saying, ‘I know this bus cause I had to ride it to the jail,'” Castro said.
Neighbors tell the family that none of their cameras caught the theft in progress.
The family said they are currently trying to work with authorities and Wal-Mart to see if they can get surveillance video of the bus in the Raytown parking lot.