‘I want him fired:’ Family upset after bus driver drops 5-year-old off in wrong neighborhood

COBB COUNTY, Ga. — The family of a five-year-old is furious after her bus driver dropped her off in the wrong neighborhood.

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The girl’s parents and grandparents are demanding the school district fire the bus driver.

The child attends Powder Springs Elementary School. Her family told Channel 2 Cobb County Bureau Chief Michele Newell she was dropped off several miles away from her home.

“This was my granddaughter’s first time riding a bus home. They initially told us her school teacher put her on the wrong bus and then once she got on that bus the bus driver told her to get off and she got off and she got lost. The bus driver told us and the school that she never got on the bus, when they looked at the camera they saw her get on the bus and get off somewhere else,” said Michelle Fanes who is the child’s grandmother.

Fanes said a good Samaritan found her granddaughter and called the police.

“She was walking around and she didn’t know where she was. She continued to walk. She just stopped completely on a main street and just stood there. She was just standing at a pole looking down crying. She said, “Grandma all I could do was just close my eyes and look down and cry.” A stranger found her, he was walking and he asked her what was wrong and she said I lost my parents,” said Fane.

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Police helped the girl find her way home after she led them to a grocery store, near her house. The mother wasn’t home when police returned the girl to her home because she was frantically searching for her daughter after she didn’t see her get off the bus. The girl’s family doesn’t think the district is doing enough to prevent the situation from happening again.

“They just explained to my daughter that they took him off work for a couple of days and gave him some training. I want him fired,” said Fane.

Fane said her granddaughter is afraid to get back onto a school bus and she is having a difficult time processing what happened to her.

The Cobb County School District released a statement regarding the incident:

“Every day, we safely deliver nearly 60,000 students to school and back home. Last week, there was some confusion regarding one of our young learners who does not normally ride the bus. We share the family’s concerns that District policies that are in place to prevent such confusion were not followed. We have apologized to the family multiple times and are investigating who and how, so we can prevent confusion in the future,” a Cobb County School District Spokesperson said.

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