Family: 6-year-old son, other students left behind at school by PGCPS bus driver

Family: 6-year-old son, other students left behind at school by bus driver

ACCOKEEK, Md. – The parents of a 6-year-old Prince George’s County boy are upset because they believe the bus driver intentionally left their child and several other students behind without a way to get home from school.

“You would think once the kids leave your house, they are going to be actually taken care of,” said the boy’s father, Michael Grady.

It is the last thing this father of two thought would happen on the third week of school. On Tuesday, Grady watched his fifth grade daughter, Jazmine, come home from school where their babysitter was waiting for them on his home surveillance cameras. But she was without her little brother Mikey.

“Once I saw her come home by herself, I immediately called the house and asked, ‘Where is your brother?’” Grady recalled. “She said, ‘He got left.’ And I’m like, ‘What do you mean he got left?’ She was like, ‘The bus driver just left him.’”

“I was pacing around because I didn’t know what to do,” Jazmine said.

“My son is not home. Any parent in their right mind, if they see that their child come home at a regular time and they are not coming home at the time they are supposed to come home, they are going to freak out,” said Grady.

He said he received no calls from Mikey’s school – Accokeek Academy. But when he called the school, he said he got no answers.

Instead, it was 10-year-old Jazmine who told him how her 6-year-old brother got left behind.

“I was telling the bus driver that my brother and some other kids weren’t on the bus,” Jazmine said. “And then he said, ‘That’s not my problem,’ and then I got off and started looking for Mikey. I didn’t see him and then when I back on the bus, they were about to leave me, and then they got me on the bus and then I started crying because I didn’t want him to be left in the school by himself.”

“[The driver said], ‘It’s not my problem, it’s not my responsibility,’ and is just going to take off and leave? How are you going to tell a 10-year-old that — that is looking out for her brother?” the concerned father told us.

Jazmine said a handful of other kindergarten and first grade students were also left at school.

“I want this to be the last time that this happens,” said Grady. “And like I said, I don’t want nothing to go on to where a parent has to go and grieve because of something bad happening to their children. It shouldn’t even get to this point.”

Mikey was eventually placed on a different bus and came home just before 6 p.m. Tuesday. We also spoke with other parents who said their children were left behind.

FOX 5 has reached out to Prince George’s County Public Schools for comment and have yet to hear back from them as of Tuesday night.

Via Fox5

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