School: Kid, 8, Stole Car During Bathroom Break

School officials said an 8-year-old boy asked his teacher to go the bathroom -- and then stole a van and left campus Tuesday.

Police said the third-grader at Eagle Mountain Elementary School drove the vehicle down winding Boat Club Road to a gas station just before lunch.

"And one of the officers said that he drove his car all the way from Eagle Mountain up to here; I just know it's way down there," said Amber Dennis, a cashier at the station.

Tammy Castleberry, an Eagle Mountain-Saginaw Independent School District spokeswoman, said the boy found the van in the school's parking lot.

"He found a car on the campus that the individual had left their keys in the car," she said.

The boy's teacher called the Tarrant County Sheriff's Department when he never came back from class.

A passing motorist also called deputies after noticing the pint-sized driver.

"A Good Samaritan noticed that a child was driving a car and also contacted the Tarrant County Sheriff's Department, and when the student pulled into a gas station, the sheriff's department was there," Castleberry said.

The boy was released into the custody of his grandparents.

The school will decide what punishment, if any, he will face.

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