A 3-year-old boy was left alone, still strapped in on a school bus in Indiana for two hours, his mother said, after the driver apparently overlooked him.
The boy’s mother said she put her son, Luke, on his bus to West Lake Pre-School on Tuesday and didn’t realize he was missing until she went to the school with another child for a book fair.
“She said, ‘He’s at home with you,” Lauren Collin said. “I said, “He is not at home with me. Where is my son?’”
Collin said the school was put on lockdown while she searched frantically for her son.
“I didn’t know where he was,” she said. “He’s 3. He’s 3 years old and the school doesn’t have him. You don’t think it’s, like, really happening because you put your child on a school bus that brings your child to school. I did not get a phone call. I did not call him in absent. So from 8:25 until 10:30, where is he?”
Collin said administrators seemed more concerned about her pregnancy than Luke’s whereabouts.
“I am like what the f’ do you mean you lost my little one,” Luke’s father, Scott Collin, said. “Like where is he?”
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Scott Collin said administrators told him they were trying to calm his wife because she is pregnant.
But then, after they locked the doors and counted the students, school employees called the bus drive at the School Town of Munster bus barn and that is where the child was found.
Then Collin got a call that Luke had been found safe and sound at the Munster bus barn, still strapped in to his seat.
“He was in the bus, alone, for two hours,” she said.
A school spokesperson told NBC 5 Thursday that an investigation is underway.
"We are currently investigating the incident to determine if all procedures were followed. Upon completion of the investigation, if it is determined that our policies and procedures need to be updated or rewritten, then we will do so," Jeffrey Hendrix said in a statement. "Our goal is to ensure that all students are kept safe at all times during their transportation to and from the School Town of Munster, as well as, the time spent in our buildings during the school day.But Collin and her husband said they want to see changes."
The family said they are keeping Luke home while they consider their options.
