School bus driver left boy of 4 six miles from home
A BOY of four was left stranded in tears when a school bus driver dumped him six miles from home.
The infant was found wandering along a busy street in freezing weather by two women who took him to the safety of a police station.
The driver has been fired for the blunder in failing to check his bus at the depot and notice the boy was still on board.
John Robertson, a P1 pupil at Munlochy Primary, Easter Ross, should been dropped off at the doorstep. Instead, the driver unwittingly left him at the depot in Inverness – miles from his home in North Kessock – facing a trek across the Kessock Bridge which carries the A9 over Beauly Firth. D & E Coaches, which operates the minibus service, apologised to the boy’s family and said the driver has been sacked for ‘gross misconduct’.
The boy’s mother Nikki Robertson, 24, said the two women who spotted him last Friday could have saved his life, adding: ‘We have no idea how long he was on his own before he was taken to the police. That road is so busy, anything could have happened.’
She added: ‘He is terrified now. He has been crying and saying he is scared. He just keeps saying that he was lost.’
After John failed to come home at his usual time, she rang the school at 4pm and was told he had been put on the bus. The family made frantic calls to the bus firm, claiming they were first told he had been dropped off, then that he had not got on board.
At 4.30pm they called police to report him missing. They were making a statement to officers when police got a message that a ‘traumatised boy’ had been found.
John had sat on the bus, scared and crying, hoping the driver would return to take him home. When he didn’t, John tried to walk home.
Mother-of-two Mrs Robertson added: ‘I would really like to hear from the women who found him. Mostly to say thank you. I don’t know how to thank them because nothing I can say is enough.
‘No words can describe the feeling of having to phone the police and say that your son is missing.
‘It is something you see on the TV. It can’t happen to you.’
She said her husband John, 26, would now take their son to school, adding: ‘The drivers should be checking for bags and jackets left behind but this is a child.’
D & E Coaches said: ‘Relying on an assurance from another pupil that this child was not on the bus is unacceptable.’
Highland Council said it was ‘extremely concerned’ and was investigating. Police said that their enquiries were continuing.
‘Extremely concerned’