A traumatised 4-year-old boy was found wandering alone in icy conditions after a school bus driver forgot to drop him home.
Instead, he was left on the bus at a depot in Inverness about 6 miles away.
His anxious parents reported their son missing to the police at about 4:30 p.m., as he hadn’t returned from school.
Meanwhile, terrified John sat in the bus crying before wandering down a busy street to try and make his way home in freezing temperatures.
As his parents were submitting the missing person report, two women found John on a street in Inverness and reported him to the local police.
“They could have saved his life,” the boy’s mother, Nikki, told the Daily Record.
“We have no idea how long he was on his own before he was taken to the police. That road is so busy that anything could have happened.”
The bus company initially claimed that he had never got on the bus at all, the boy’s parents said.
“The drivers should be checking their buses for bags and jackets left behind but this is a child, not a bag.
“His dad will now be taking him to school and back but I wouldn’t have put him on the bus if I didn’t think it was safe, if I had heard of it happening before, I wouldn’t have put him,” she said.
She added, “No words can describe the feeling of having to phone the police and say that your son is missing. It is something you see on the TV, it can’t happen to you, not when he is meant to be dropped off at the door.
“I just want answers from someone because this cannot happen to another child.”
A spokesperson from D&E Coaches told the Sun: “We are extremely disappointed at the circumstances in which a child was left on one of our minibuses going from Munlochy Primary School to North Kessock last Friday.
“A full internal investigation has been conducted and the driver concerned has been dismissed for gross misconduct.”
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