An Indiana child fell asleep on a school bus and was left alone on that bus for hours, according to the 16WNDU news.
In this case, a 5-year old South Bend kindergarten student named Keaton boarded the bus at about 7:30 a.m. Wednesday and wasn’t discovered until 2 p.m.
That’s a total of six and a half hours spent on the bus and about five hours spent alone after the bus was parked at the school system’s transportation facility off Bendix Drive.
“He says that he woke up and he screamed for the bus driver, and when nobody came, then he was crying for his family and his blanket, and his dad, and when he calmed down he just read his book and waited for somebody to come find him,” said Keaton’s mom, Jenyfer Smith. “If anybody else would have left their kid for that long, we’d be sitting in jail.”
Smith says there were two adults on the bus, a driver and an assistant who had two chances to discover the situation. First, when the bus stopped at Hay School and second when the bus was parked at the transportation facility between the a.m. and p.m. routes.
The South Bend Community School Corporation issued a written statement saying that “drivers and attendants are trained to walk the interior of the bus from back to front after each route to ensure no student has been left on the bus.”
The statement went on to say, “The incident yesterday is being fully investigated and all appropriate disciplinary action will be taken.”
