5-year-old left alone on school bus for 90 minutes, parents say
A mother and father in Fayette County want answers after they say their 5-year-old was alone on a school bus for 90 minutes.
By Shelley Bortz
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FAIRCHANCE, Pennsylvania (KDKA) — A mother and father in Fayette County want answers after they say their 5-year-old was alone on a school bus for 90 minutes.
They say they’re determined to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
The little boy fell asleep on his way to school in the morning. When he woke up, he was on the bus alone in the driveway of his bus driver in a neighborhood in Fairchance.
“He was kicking and screaming to try to get someone’s attention,” said Gary Cooper, the boy’s father.
Cooper says that’s what his 5-year-old son, Lane, did when he was on the bus. He screamed and pounded on the window, and when no one heard him, he kicked the door to get out.
“That’s pretty scary.”
Cooper told KDKA-TV that Lane’s bus driver and the bus monitor did not see his son asleep in the seat when they dropped the students off at preschool, even though it is protocol for every seat to be checked before the bus can pull away.
“There [are] so many procedures put in place so this can’t happen, but yet, it still did,” Gary Cooper said.
Cooper says after his son freed himself from the bus, he knocked on the bus driver’s front door and was transported, unharmed, back to school.
Once there, the child’s parents and the Albert Gallatin Area School District superintendent were immediately notified.
“When I received the call yesterday, I was shaken,” said Albert Gallatin Area School District Superintendent Christopher Pegg.
While the preschool is not affiliated with the Albert Gallatin district, the district’s contracted bus company, STA, transports the pre-K students to and from school.
Pegg is treating the incident as if it happened to one of the district’s K-12 students.
“We’re not going to sugarcoat it. It happened. We dealt with it swiftly and appropriately, and we’re going to do everything in our power to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again on Albert Gallatin school buses.”
KDKA-TV talked to the preschool director who says when she learned of the incident, she was devastated.
Because the bus company dropped the ball, she’s currently in the process of creating her own system to ensure none of her students are ever left behind again.
KDKA-TV reached out to the bus company but did not hear back.
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