Jul 9, 2009 12:43 pm US/Eastern
Bronx Special Needs Child Left On Bus For Hours
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
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A Bronx mother is demanding answers after her 3-year-old son was allegedly left on a school bus and went missing for five hours.
CBS
A Bronx mother is demanding answers after her 3-year-old son was allegedly left on a school bus and went missing for five hours.
Sharlene Elliott's son, Kwame Cooper, suffers from cerebral palsy and attends the child's Institute for Applied Human Dynamics, a special-needs school in Parkchester. On Monday afternoon, the school bus Cooper usually rides home pulled up to its usual stop, where Elliott was waiting to pick him up.
But the boy was not on board.
"I am so upset," Elliott said. "I really don't think words can describe it, because when I didn't see him come home my heart came up into my throat."
The bus was supposed to pick Cooper up at 2 p.m., but police found him at the bus depot at approximately 7 p.m.
"The bus company is blaming it on the school, and the school is blaming it on the bus company," Elliott said.
IAHD School Director Denise Turner declined to comment on the incident, and referred CBS 2 HD's reporter to the GVC Bus Company.
"You really need to contact the bus company," Turner said. "We don't have anything to do with that. We just take the kids to (the buses) and that's it."
Elliott added that it is still unclear where her son was or who he was with during the five-hour span.
"They don't know how the lady who brought him to the depot got him," Elliott said. "We don't know how she got him. We don't know where she picked him up from … Because no one is telling us"
Elliott has since pulled her son out of IAHD and is opting to home-school him instead. But she is still determined to find out exactly what happened in the bus mix-up.
"I'm not going to let this rest because my son hasn't been sleeping (and) I haven't been sleeping," Elliott said.
(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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