LEE’S SUMMIT, Mo. — An Oak Grove woman is furious that a bus stop is right in front of a sex offender’s house. This route is part of the Lee’s Summit R-7 School District.
On one street, there are two bus stops to take children to school, but one parent says neither one of them is safe.
For one parent, the mornings are most worrisome. That’s when she has to walk her kids to the bus stop.
“I don’t like him being able to stand at his car and seeing children,” a concerned neighbor said.
She’s talking about the sex offender who lives down the street, near one of two bus stops in the neighborhood. She wants to keep her identity hidden for fear of retribution.
“Unless there is a parent out there every single day, what is to stop him from doing something,” she said.
This happened 23 years ago. The man sodomized two eight-year-old girls and a six-year-old girl.
The parent says her children use the bus stop two houses down. She says you can still see the children from the sex offender’s house. And that worries her. But not everyone feels the same way.
“He served his time. Everybody unfortunately makes mistakes,” said Angela Clasen.
Clasen has a seven-year-old son who takes that bus every day. She’s fully aware of her neighbor’s past.
The concerned parent has reached out to the school and the Lee’s Summit school district contacted Clasen instead. That’s because Clasen lives directly across from the sex offender and she would be immediately impacted.
In a statement from the Lee’s Summit school district:
“Our Transportation Department and Administrative Office received a call earlier this week from a parent concerned about a registered sex offender living near a school bus stop. Upon investigating this call, it was determined that one student waits for the bus at this stop. Transportation administrators talked to the parent of the one child waiting at this stop. The parent of the child at the bus stop preferred that the bus stop not be moved since the child at the current stop would then have to walk a longer distance to the bus stop, making it more difficult for the parent to view the child as the child walks to and from the stop and waits for the school bus. The decision to not move the bus stop was based on the wishes of the parent of the child who is currently assigned to the bus stop.”
The route stays, despite the concerns from another parent who says she just wants the bus stop moved.
