On 1 December 1988, a LAZ-697 bus carrying around thirty pupils and one teacher from school 42 in Ordzhonikidze, Soviet Union was hijacked by five-armed criminals, led by Pavel Yakshiyants.
Perpetrators
The five hijackers were Pavel Levonovich Yakshiyants, Vladimir Alexandrovich Muravlev, German Lvovich Vishnyakov, Vladimir Robertovich Anastasov, and Tofiy Jafarov. Yakshiyants and Muravlev were already ex-convicts before the incident. Yakshiyants, an Armenian, was first convicted at age 17 and sentenced to two years in prison for theft. Later, he was sentenced to four years in prison for robbery. In 1972, he was sentenced to ten years, again for robbery, but released on parole in 1979. ==Hijacking==
Hijacking
The group of 30–31 The hijackers rode to the local obkom and demanded about 2 million rubles (about US$3.3 million at the time) ==Media==
Media
The 1990 film Frenzied Bus was based on the hijacking. The 2024 biographical film Komandir was based on the hijacking. ==References==