The grandmother of a Kansas kindergartener is demanding answers after a routine school day turned into a harrowing ordeal for her grandson, who was left on a school bus for several hours when they fell asleep on their way to school.
Five-year-old Lane Meitl ended up in the driveway of the driver’s own home after completing the morning’s school dropoff.
The driver had parked the vehicle completely unaware there was still a young passenger asleep on the seats of her bus.
Lane woke up hours later to find himself stranded and locked inside the bus in the tiny city of Hoxie, home to about 1,000 people. His grandmother was in disbelief.
‘How could that happen?’ Leta Meitl said to KWCH.
‘You count three getting off the bus. You count three getting on the bus. It’s not rocket science.’
The Hoxie School District acted swiftly and confirmed the female bus driver is no longer employed with the district since the October 28 incident.
‘We learned that a student had been left on a school bus for a portion of the school day. Thankfully, the student was not harmed, and we are continuing to support the family,’ the district said in a statement.
Five-year-old Lane Meitl ended up in the driveway of the bus driver’s own home after completing the morning’s school dropoff route
Lane’s grandmother Leta Meitl cannot understand how such an oversight occurred
Despite the district’s assurance that Lane was unharmed, Leta couldn’t stop imagining her grandson’s confusion and fear.
‘I cried. I just kept wondering what was going on in his little mind,’ she said.
Over the last few weeks the grandmother has been looking for answers as to how the incident occurred.
Thankfully, weather conditions in Kansas were neither too cold nor too hot and the little boy was fine but his family shudders to think of what might have happened under harsher weather conditions.
Leta said she hopes that drivers will now make it a habit of checking their buses at the end of their shifts, before walking out.
Lane’s mother, Taylor, posted online how the district had been ‘supportive’ since the incident
The Hoxie School District confirmed that the female bus driver is no longer employed with the district since the incident on October 28
‘It takes less than 10 seconds to walk to the back and back to the front of the bus,’ she said.
Despite the scare, Lane’s mother, Taylor, expressed gratitude for the district’s response.
‘Hoxie has been very kind to us about this and continuing to support us. We do love Hoxie and are very grateful for the school district,’ she wrote online.