A Detroit mother, Tashonda Bennett, was left furious and frantic after discovering her 9-year-old son had been left sleeping and locked on a school bus for hours.
Bennett’s son, who usually arrives home from Detroit Service Learning Academy around 3:45 PM, did not return as expected, leading to a distressing evening for the family.
According to FOX 2 Detroit, the incident came to light when Bennett woke up around 7 PM and realized her son had not come home from school.
Panicked, she began calling everyone she could think of, including the bus driver, to locate her missing child.
In a news interview, Bennett revealed:
“He told me that my son did not get on the bus, which means he never knew that my son was even back there asleep. That’s what makes me think that he didn’t do his walk-through.”
Despite the bus driver’s assertion that the child never boarded the bus, Bennett’s older daughter, who attends the same school, insisted she had seen her brother get on.
“She kept stressing to me – ‘Mom, I put him on the bus,’” Bennett recounted.
Desperate and worried, Bennett reached out to the school, police, and family members, but her attempts to locate her son were unsuccessful.
The ordeal ended around 9:30 PM when the boy’s 16-year-old brother and grandmother found him asleep on the bus. The older brother had to lift him out through a hatch on top of the vehicle.
“He was asleep. I was banging on the window. He woke up, he was wiping his eyes, looking around, and he just started crying,” the brother said. “I knew there was a hatch (on top of the bus), so I opened the hatch.”
Detroit police confirmed the sequence of events, shedding light on a situation that left a family in distress and a mother demanding answers.
The incident has raised serious concerns about the safety protocols of school transportation services, especially regarding the thoroughness of post-route checks by bus drivers.
This incident lends credence to the importance of vigilance and proper procedures to ensure the safety of children relying on school bus services.
