The child was apparently left on the vehicle without food for five hours as temperatures reached as high as 94 degrees.
A 5-year-old girl in Vermilion Parish, Louisiana, got on a school bus ready for a day of summer school on Thursday. However, she reportedly did not leave the bus until school was over—five hours later.
Staff left the girl on the bus after it transported her from Cecil Picard Elementary School to LeBlanc Elementary School around 7:30 a.m. Summer school finishes at 12:30 p.m., and while her classmates had their lessons, the young girl apparently sat alone on the bus as temperatures soared to 94 degrees.
“She didn’t get breakfast, she didn’t get lunch; she was on that bus in this hot heat for five hours,” her mom, Donyel Rolle, told the local news outlet KATC.
School officials later confirmed the incident to KATC but only after Donyel and her husband Raynard Rolle reached out to them. Their daughter mentioned having a bad day and explained that she got stuck on the bus. Initially, her mother thought the delay was brief. “In my mind, I was thinking she got stuck on the bus for a small amount of time, someone probably noticed, and someone got her,” Donyel said. “But I was still furious because we were not notified of any of it.”
Upon further questioning, the parents learned that she was on the bus the entire five hours. Raynard added, “My wife kept asking her questions over and over to make sure it wasn’t a joke and she was telling us detail to detail.”
After contacting school officials, the parents had one conversation, during which their daughter’s story was confirmed. Though they were not allowed to see the bus’s security footage themselves, they were told that the video footage verified their daughter’s account. “Basically, a man—I think he’s the assistant superintendent and safety guy—said they were watching the video of the bus and confirmed that our daughter was 100 percent correct,” Donyel said.
The superintendent of the Vermilion Parish School System, Thomas Byler, was informed about the incident and said that disciplinary procedures were implemented promptly. “We were made aware of the incident and the procedures and protocols regarding disciplinary action of school personnel were immediately put into place,” he stated.
Donyel and Raynard insist that new procedures should be established to prevent such incidents from happening again. “I think justice would be to prevent this from happening again,” Donyel said. “There needs to be a mandatory type of rule that when you’re transporting any type of children, small or big, once they vacate the bus, they need to look.”
