SHAWNEE, Kan. — A school bus mix-up leaves a mother searching for her seven-year-old son who has autism.
The bus driver dropped him off on the wrong street, a stranger took him in.
LaShane Harper waited outside for the school bus driver to drop off her son, but he wasn’t there. She called First Student and then Shawnee police. She was told the driver already dropped Isaiah off at his house.
“Whose home? I’ve been waiting outside for ten minutes waiting for my child,” she said.
Harper said the bus driver allowed her first grader to walk into a stranger’s house a block away on 48th Street instead of 48th Terrace. She knocked on the door.
“When he opened the door, I said ‘do you have a little brown boy in here?’ That’s exactly what came out of my mouth,” she said.
After thirty minutes of searching, she found her son playing inside the stranger’s house. She said the man thought Isaiah was a neighborhood kid and if no one came looking for him, he would’ve called police.
“I was very grateful because it could’ve turned out to be very different,” Harper said.
This was the first time her son took the bus so First Student called to make sure the location was correct. The address was wrong on the voicemail left for Harper. She called back to fix the problem to avoid a mix-up.
First Student is investigating and has suspended the driver. Harper said the mix-up won’t happen again. This is the first — and last — time Isaiah will be taking the bus to school.
“After this incident, I don’t trust the bus company at all,” she said.
The Shawnee Mission School District reached out to First Student to review rules and procedures. It says it regrets this incident happened.