Washington county council candidate once threatened to blow up school bus: court docs

Progressive Ubax Gardheere is running for the King County Council in the Seattle area

A Seattle-area county council candidate once threatened to blow up a school bus and mocked the children who fled the vehicle as "cowards," according to court documents. 

Progressive candidate Ubax Gardheere is running for the King County Council in the Seattle, Washington area and has been endorsed by some local Democratic officials, including state Senator Rebecca Saldana, who said she "would follow Ubax anywhere."

However, in 2010, Gardheere faced felony charges after she boarded a Highline School District bus making its morning rounds and demanded the driver inform his dispatch "that a national security incident was going on," according to court documents reviewed by Fox News. 

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After demanding the driver send her message to dispatch, Gardheere – who is today the director of the Equitable Development Division in Seattle’s Office of Planning and Community Development – proceeded to verbally attack the Chinook Middle School students onboard the bus over America’s relationship with Somalia, according to court documents. 

"More than one student reported her saying Americans were bad people," the charges said, which also noted that "Gardheere was not the parent of any children on the bus."

When the driver and students told Gardheere to get off the bus, the now-county council candidate told them multiple times that they needed to calm down because she could have a "bomb" and might have a gun, the documents show.

"You need to calm yourselves down 'cause I could have a bomb. Look how loose my clothes are," Gardheere said, according to an audio recording of the incident described in court documents. 

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The Post Millennial, which first flagged the court documents in an article published Friday, noted that deputy prosecutor Gretchen Holmgrem said that when students started fleeing the bus through the emergency exit, Gardheere called them "cowards." The court documents also say at least one student heard her call the fleeing students "White cowards."

"While speaking with the middle school students, the defendant stated that she might have a bomb and might have a gun," Holmgren wrote to the King County court. "When students attempted to escape out the back of the bus, she called them cowards and told them they would be responsible if something happened to their classmates."

"Several students believed she had a weapon of some kind and many feared for their lives," Holmgren added. A detective with King County law enforcement said Gardheere had declared she was "prepared to die" but revealed she did not have a weapon on her.

Gardheere was hit with felony charges, including kidnapping, but pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor as part of a pretrial agreement with prosecutors. 

According to a Seattle Weekly article from 2010, Gardheere suffered from postpartum depression after the birth of her son three years prior and had a stint in the hospital because of it. She also said her mental health worsened after visiting her in-laws in Dubai while en route to Somalia in 2008.

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"I’m thinking in my head, ‘What can I say or do that will get you taken to jail instead of a mental institute?’" Gardheere said at the time.

Gardheere appeared to change her story in a recent interview to the South Seattle Emerald, however, where she claimed that she was "criminalized" for "having a mental breakdown" after threatening to bomb a school bus. 

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The county council candidate has outlined how she wants to replace capitalism with "an economic system that is based on abundance and communal self-determination for communities of color and all people" on her website and said in her interview with the Emerald that moderate Democrats were "adjusted to whiteness."

Gardheere did not respond to Fox News' request for comment.

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