DOUGLASSVILLE, Pa.—A 5-year-old Pennsylvania boy missed his first day of kindergarten after being left alone on a locked school bus for nearly four hours.
The driver didn’t notice that Prince Oquendo didn’t get off the bus Tuesday at Monocacy Elementary Center in Berks County. The Reading Eagle reports the driver then returned to the bus parking lot and got off without walking up and down the aisles, which is standard procedure.
Prince’s mother discovered him missing when he didn’t return home after school.
The boy was found on the bus, and his mother took him to a hospital, where he was given fluids and told to rest.
The bus driver has been fired. Officials with the transportation company and the Daniel Boone School District are apologizing for the mishap.
“It was traumatizing to me. He was hot, sweaty. He didn’t even know who I was at first,” Michelle Oquendo said, CBS Local reported.
“You have traumatized a five-year-old child. That could have been my son or someone else’s daughter,” one mother said at a school-parents conference, WFMZ reported.
“Please tell me why my child got home at nearly five o'clock the last two days when he lives within 15 minutes walking distance and a three-minute car ride,” another father said. “This is absolutely unacceptable.”
Epoch Times contributed to this report.
