21 minutes of panic as Moncton school bus driver disappears with students
Chris Roberts watched as bus driver drove away with his 5-year-old
Chris Roberts was at the bus stop as usual, waiting for his five-year-old son to come home from his Moncton school.
The bus arrived, the door opened and a number of students got off. Then the driver suddenly closed the door and started to drive away.
With his son still on the bus, Roberts began to run toward the bus to alert the driver.
"I started kind of running towards the bus, waving my hands in the air," Roberts said of the incident March 27. "That's when he just took off, waved to me, and in that instant, I had no idea what to expect."
Parents have been trying to piece together what happened but still don't have a clear picture because the Anglophone East School District isn't answering their questions.
They know about a dozen kids usually get off the bus on Chesed Boulevard, in a neighbourhood off the Salisbury Road in Moncton's west end, every day at about 3 p.m.
But on this day, the driver only let about half of them off the bus before driving away.
Roberts was even more concerned because he had heard the bus driver say something that sounded like he was going to teach the children a lesson.
Down the street, meanwhile, Kenny Caron was waiting for his 10-year-old son to arrive home from Bessborough School.
When the usual time came and went without his son's arrival, Caron hopped into his car and drove to the bus stop, where he met Roberts, who was on the phone with the school.
Father waited with pounding heart
Caron decided to drive to the school, thinking the bus driver might have returned there with the kids. When he failed to locate the bus, he returned to his son's bus stop.
By now, an official with the school had told Roberts she reached the driver by radio and he said he was going to finish his route and then drop the kids off.
"So then I just sat there, you know, my heart pounded out of my chest for a couple of minutes," Roberts said.
Until the bus returned with the remaining children, Caron said, he was panicking "because we didn't know if he's having a mental breakdown or what is going on."
All they deduced from the receptionist was that the driver "was going to take them on a drive to scare them straight," he said.
Getting answers impossible, parents learn
Caron said he and his wife, Gylian, "were shaken up for three or four days" after the incident, and his son is still upset.
The Carons immediately tried to get answers from the district about what happened — and what will happen to the driver.
"We sent emails right up to the top," he said. "Everybody's aware. Nobody contacted us."
And all they wanted was reassurance from the district that the driver has been reprimanded and educated to ensure nothing like this ever happens again — and that he's competent and safe to drive a school bus.
"Nobody told us that."
Roberts is also disappointed in the lack of communication from the district about the event and its aftermath.
"It would have been nice to get some kind of acknowledgement from the district or the school or some kind of accountability, you know what I mean?"
District, department decline interview requests
The Department of Education was asked for an interview, but a spokesperson said the district "is better suited to handle your enquiry."
Stephanie Patterson, director of communications for the district, declined an interview request. In an email, she wrote: "We do not comment on specific personnel matters. Families are encouraged to reach out to the District Office if they have any questions or concerns."
Gylian Caron said they tried that.
"I've emailed absolutely everyone I possibly could think of up to the minister of education, the minister of transportation, and I have not received any response except from two MLAs that said that they would push what they could."
Kenny Caron was pleased the district put another adult on the bus with the driver last week, something he knows only because he waited at the bus stop for his son.
Without any communications from the district, Caron said, parents who were not at the bus stop may not even have heard about the incident — even parents of the children who were taken for the ride by the driver.
"So I'm glad they put somebody with him, maybe to coach him," Caron said. "Maybe he needs the extra coaching and how to deal with children and all that.
"But please keep the parents aware of what's going on so we can calm down and keep on living our lives."
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