A school bus driver for a contracted transportation provider was ticketed on suspicion of child neglect after authorities found a 5-year-old boy Wednesday night who never returned home from school that day, reports the Omaha World-Herald.
Samuel Van Tha Bik, whose family is from Burma and doesn’t speak English, was released from Field Club Elementary School shortly after 4 p.m. But Omaha Public Schools received word at 6 p.m. that the boy was missing. Clarence Pope, the driver for the Eastern Nebraska Community Action Partnership, told school officials he had dropped the student off at his house that afternoon.
Police officers searched with a helicopter and squad cars before finally locating him sitting in the locked school bus at the contractor’s bus yard. The boy had no reported injuries.
The school district was reportedly meeting with the contractor, which provides transportation service for homeless and refugee students, on Thursday evening “to learn how this happened, why it happened, and to ensure our contractor takes any appropriate disciplinary action,” OPS spokeswoman Monique Farmer told the paper.
A similar incident occurred last year with another OPS student, the paper reported. A 5-year-old girl with cerebral palsy, a feeding tube and selective mutism was found locked inside a school bus 9 miles from home after she wasn’t dropped off at her house.
Meanwhile, a 5-year-old kindergartner missed his first day of school in Pennsylvania on Tuesday after being left alone on his school bus for four hours. The boy was found in the bus parking about four miles from his school and reportedly cried himself to sleep twice.
The boy was treated for dehydration at a local hospital before being released.
