 The suspect accused of holding three women captive in Ohio for a decade was investigated by police in 2004 for abduction and endangering children after he kept a boy on his school bus for two hours. A day after authorities arrested Ariel, Onil and Pedro Castro in the kidnappings of Gina DeJesus, Michelle Knight and Amanda Berry, a troubling portrait is emerging of the men. Ariel Castro, 52, was revealed to have driven the boy around instead of dropping him off at school, at one point ordering him to "lay down, bitch". Castro, who was fired from his job as a school bus driver in 2012, has been arrested with his two brothers Pedro, 54, and Onil, 50, in connection with the imprisonment of three women who escaped from his home in a western neighbourhood of Cleveland on Monday night. I've been on the news for the last 10 years." But a disciplinary file prepared by Cleveland metropolitan school district shows that he was investigated by police, shortly before DeJesus went missing, in connection with two serious alleged crimes: abduction and child endangering. Senior police officers have insisted they did everything they could in the course of the decade to try and find the women: Michelle Knight, who was abducted in August 2002 aged 21, Amanda Berry, who vanished the following April at age 16, and Gina DeJesus, who was 14 when she disappeared in April 2004. Safety Director Martin Flask said police got call at 5:52 from Berry and that police arrived just more than two minutes later. The women appeared to be in good health and were taken to MetroHealth Medical Center to be evaluated and reunited with relatives. A recording of the call was released on Tuesday, in which she said: "I'm Amanda Berry. She begged for police officers to come to the home before a man who had taken her returned. After eating, the report says, Castro "returned to the bus and drove around for a while. Officials did not address those incidents at a press conference on Tuesday but admitted that they had visited the Castro house twice in the past 15 years. Martin Flask, the director of public safety in Cleveland, said Ariel Castro reported a fight in the street in 2000, before the women disappeared, but no arrests were made. In January 2004, police went to the address after Castro, either intentionally or accidentally, left a child on a Cleveland school bus, but were unsuccessful in making contact with anyone in the home. In November, Ariel Castro was fired from his job as a Cleveland school bus driver for leaving his bus unattended for four hours last September while he went home. Before being fired Nov. 6, Castro had been suspended for 60 days twice -- for leaving the child on the bus and making an illegal U-turn in rush-hour traffic with a busload of students in 2009. He was also castigated for having used a school bus to do grocery shopping, and most recently for having left a bus at Scranton school for four hours to return home. In 2004, a special education student at Wade Park Elementary School was left on Castro's bus after another student was dropped off, according to a Cleveland police report. Castro came back to the bus and drove it, with the boy still present, to Wendy's fast-food restaurant where he had lunch, leaving the child in the vehicle alone. Police went to the Seymour Avenue home to question Castro but no one came to the door. The brothers were from a family of nine siblings.
– Friends and neighbors of the Castro brothers say there is nothing about the three men that signaled they were capable of a crime as horrific as the kidnapping and decade-long imprisonment of three young women, the Cleveland Plain Dealer finds. Onil, 50; Ariel, 52; and Pedro, 54, are members of a large and well-known family who was among the first Hispanics to settle in Cleveland. Associates describe the men as smart and funny, though Ariel has a history of domestic violence and the other two were very heavy drinkers. Onil and Pedro hadn't worked in years, while Ariel was fired from his job as a school bus driver last fall. "They were all good kids," says a lifelong friend of the brothers, who have six other siblings. "That's why this news is devastating. It's not only horrifying to the families of the kidnapped girls, it's devastating to us, because these brothers were all very good kids who grew up in a very good family." Ariel, a musician who played in local Latin bands, had become more withdrawn in recent years, his uncle tells the New York Times. "It could have been because of the hiding personality. He had to have two personalities," he says. Ariel, the only brother to have lived at the home where the women were found, had a wife and three children but that marriage ended and the other two brothers never married. One of Ariel's children, 25-year-old Emily Castro, is serving a 25-years-to-life sentence for trying to murder her infant daughter in 2007, USA Today reports. In 2004, shortly before kidnap victim Gina DeJesus went missing, Ariel was investigated by police for abduction and child endangerment, the Guardian reports. A police report states that Castro kept a child on his school bus for two hours instead of dropping him off at school, at one point ordering the boy to "Lay down, b****." Police determined that no assault had taken place and no law had been broken, though Castro was suspended from his job for 60 days. During that investigation, police visited the home at which the three women were held, but after finding nobody home, they went away and didn't return.