PITTSBURGH, Pa. — A Pittsburgh mother says her little boy was left all alone on his school bus for hours on Monday, crying in the bus garage.
India Mitchell got the confusing call Monday morning. Her 4-year-old son Kory was not in school.
Instead, he was in a bus garage.
“The first thing I thought was, is he OK?” Mitchell said.
WPXI's Marlisa Goldsmith is working to talk with officials from both the Pittsburgh Public Schools and Monark Transportation about what happened. Watch her report coming up on Channel 11 News beginning at 5 p.m.
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Kory was supposed to be headed to Chartiers Early Childhood Center when Mitchell put him on the bus this morning. But he never made it.
“I put my trust in them, like, OK, you are going to get my son from point A to point B, and you didn't do that,” she said. “You didn't make sure. You didn't even care.”
The school says the bus driver reported her son as sick and said he hadn't come to school that day. A school staff member asked the driver to check the bus again. She said he did – and still didn't see Kory.
“My son is the last kid to be picked up. The school is five minutes from my house, at most,” Mitchell said.
Further investigation led officials to the Monark Transportation garage, where they found Kory all alone.
“He was scared, he was crying,” Mitchell said. “He told me he thought he was never going to see me again.
"My son was hurting. He was on that bus … he was probably on that bus for a long time before anyone said anything or noticed him."
Mitchell said the bus company claimed it took hours to let her know what happened because they didn't have her phone number. But Kory has an emergency contact sticker on his backpack.
“You had my address. Why didn't someone bring my son home?” she said.
Mitchell said her son is now afraid to get on the bus. The school district says that driver is off the job.
Mitch said she hopes in the future the bus company will do more thorough checks to make sure every student is off the bus.