A driver has been fired after a four-year-old girl was left in a parked school bus for three hours in the cold in Windsor, Ont.
At around 5:30 p.m. on Monday evening, JoAnne Chartier arrived at her daughter Ellery’s daycare to take her home. She told Windsor radio station AM800 that, when she couldn’t find her with the other kids, she went and talked to one of the daycare’s workers.
“I said, ‘Where’s Ellery?’ and she’s like, ‘She didn’t get off the bus,’” Chartier recalled. “At that point I started freaking out.”
Chartier started making frantic calls to Giles Campus French Immersion Public School, where her daughter attends kindergarten, as well as the police and the bus company responsible for transporting children from school to the daycare.
She also messaged her daughter’s kindergarten teacher to confirm that Ellery had actually boarded the bus after school. Chartier was told that her daughter did indeed get on the bus after class that day.
“At that point, I know my daughter, I was pretty sure that she either fell asleep on the bus or someone took her. Those are the only options,” she said. “She’s way too smart to get off at a different bus stop.”
Finally, Chartier was able to get in touch with someone from the bus company, CG Pearson Bus Lines Ltd., to find out where the buses are kept after hours.
Even though she had been alone on the bus in the cold for three hours, Ellery was okay when her family eventually found her.
“She was in pretty good spirits. I don’t think she really realized what was going on,” Chartier said. “I’m pretty sure she was sleeping the whole time.”
The longtime bus driver of 16 years was fired in the aftermath of the incident, according to the Windsor-Essex Student Transportation Services (WESTS), which manages the region’s school bus companies.
The unidentified driver, who has been driving school buses for 16 years, didn’t follow proper protocol, WESTS’ general manager Gabrielle McMillan told CTV Windsor on Tuesday. All drivers are supposed to check all of the bus seats after a trip to ensure they’re empty, she explained.
Ryan Pearson, the general manager for CG Pearson Bus Lines Ltd., said the company is reviewing their procedures to make it easier for parents and educational staff to contact them.
“We’re working with the schools, with the daycares, making sure that our information is available to everyone and more readily available so we are able to react as quickly as we can to any type of situation, even for after-hours calls, like we experienced last night,” Pearson told CTV Windsor on Tuesday.
The bus company is in the process of setting up an emergency contact line, Pearson said.
The daycare where Ellery attends, Toy Box Daycare, told CTV News in a written statement that they’re conducting a “comprehensive review” to ensure such incidents don’t occur in the future.
“We were deeply shaken by yesterday's events,” operator Anna Raymond wrote. “In our fifteen years of operation, The Toy Box Early Childhood Education Centre has never experienced a similar issue with our transportation provider.”
Although the Windsor Police were called to the scene on Tuesday, Sgt. Steve Betteridge said there was no criminality.
With files from CTV Windsor
