TOMBALL, Texas – School district officials have apologized to the mother of a preschooler after his school bus driver dropped him off at the wrong stop.
"If this would have happened to anyone else's child, they'd be as equally upset as I am," the boy's mother, Shanta Williams, said.
According to a Klein Independent School District representative, the bus driver did not notice that the 4-year-old Frank Elementary student got off at the wrong stop last Thursday afternoon. He was dropped off in the correct neighborhood, but not at his correct stop on the opposite side of the 400-home Tomball neighborhood.
"There's kids being taken every day," Williams said. "There's people who are waiting at these bus stops waiting for these children to not have a parent there to pick him up."
A Klein ISD statement acknowledged that the bus driver is responsible for seeing that the students get off at the correct stop and either the parent or their designee meet all pre-school students as required.
"A stranger took him to the (community) front office because she saw him walking alone," Williams said. "It's appalling. It's shocking. It's sad and it's scary."
Williams said that she met with school administrators as well as the bus driver to make sure this doesn't happen again. A campus administrator even rode the bus with her son, Jaidel, the next day.
Still, the mistake has Williams worried.
"I'm trying to teach him not to talk to strangers," Williams said. "And here he is having to trust a stranger to take him home."
Williams said that she's thankful that the stranger who helped her son get home was the mother of another preschooler instead of a stranger with bad intentions.
"I just want to thank whoever the mother was that brought my son to the office so that he can come home to me," Williams exhaled. "It was only his fourth day at his new school. He didn't know where he was going."
"He was far away," said Lindsy Whitmire, the woman who found the boy. "He was in the right neighborhood, but he wasn't at home."
After nearly an hour of driving around the community with a front office employee, the 4-year-old finally spotted his father's car parked outside their home.
As an extra precaution, district officials said the boy will now sit directly behind the bus driver so that he gets off at the correct stop.