Jan 2, 2009 7:42 am US/Eastern
Disabled Man's Ordeal Leads To Bus Matron's Arrest
Family Furious After Man With Cerebral Palsy Was Left Alone In Frigid Brooklyn Yard For 19 Hours
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
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Sources told CBS 2 HD police arrested bus matron Linda Hockaday, the assistant to the bus driver. The source said Hockaday admitted to knowing that Rivera was still on the bus when it was locked up on a freezing winter night.
CBS
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This is the Oustanding Transport bus that 22-year-old Ed Rivera, who has cerebral palsy, spent 19 hours on after the driver forgot about him on New Year's Eve.
CBS
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A 22-year-old man with cerebral palsy who was missing since Wednesday afternoon has been found alive. He spent the entire night locked on a bus in freezing temperatures. Edwin Rivera was taken to Brookdale Hospital today and is in stable condition.
CBS
He could have frozen to death.
On Thursday night police charged a 51-year-old woman for allegedly leaving a mentally and physically challenged man -- overnight -- on a bus for 19 hours.
Ed Rivera, who has cerebral palsy and the mental capacity of a 2-year-old, survived alone, trapped in a parking lot Wednesday night, as the wind chill hovered near zero.
Rivera's New York City family was in disbelief Thursday night following a day of uncertainty.
Rivera didn't arrive home Wednesday night. His special needs bus, ironically named Outstanding Transport, should have dropped him in East Harlem, but investigators found him almost a day later -- miles away in a Brooklyn bus yard. Sources tell CBS 2 HD Rivera was strapped in his seat directly behind the driver's seat. How the driver missed him is not known.
However, late Thursday sources told CBS 2 HD police were talking to the bus matron Linda Hockaday, the assistant to the bus driver. The source said Hockaday admitted to knowing that Rivera was still on the bus when it was locked up on one of the coldest nights of the year. Her rationale for leaving? She apparently didn't want to be late for church.
CBS 2 HD obtained cell video of Rivera in the hospital enjoying warm blankets and a warm meal on a New Year's Day his family will never forget.
His family broke into tearful celebration after getting the call they prayed all night for, that the missing 22-year-old was alive after never coming home from his special needs program.
"How could you lose a whole person?" sister Cristina Rivera wondered.
Rivera was one of the many visiting her brother in the hospital Thursday, hours after police went back to the bus yard a second time, this time with family, to look for Ed again. They found him on the very bus he had gotten on 19 hours earlier.
"He was leaning towards the side, strapped in his seatbelt, shivering, he was shivering," Cristina Rivera said.
"I'm so relieved and I'm so mad at this bus company for leaving him," sister Leslie Rivera added. "How do you miss it? He's not a kid. He's 22 years old. He's almost 6-foot-2. How do you miss him?"
CBS 2 HD went to Outstanding Transport for some answers but no one came to the door or answered the phone to explain the apparent negligence that sent one of the company's most dependent passengers to the hospital.
"For him to be out there all alone seat-belted, it wasn't … it's not a way to treat any person," Leslie Rivera said.
Sources also tell CBS 2 HD that the bus company did not tell police about the second lot where the white buses are kept. Police officers searched the lot with the yellow school buses but they were never told there was another lot.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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