A non-verbal autistic pre-K student was found freezing and alone on a school bus in a parking lot more than two hours after he was supposed to be dropped off at his Jersey City home Monday.Chinasia McNeill told The Jersey Journal her 5-year-old son Kyrie was located at 5 p.m., only after she suggested the bus company check the school bus, which was parked in the JR Transportation lot on Johnston Avenue.
The boy, already among the school district’s most vulnerable, hasn’t been the same since the traumatic experience, his mom says. And he hasn’t been back to school. A large sign with red letters on a fence at JR Transportation reads “Before leaving your bus check for sleeping children.” Referring to the bus company, she said “I don’t know if they check these people’s credentials when the bus company hires them.”
McNeil went to School 30 and from there school officials attempted to track the bus, she said. Eventually they got a security officer at JR Transportation on the phone and they were told the lot was closed, all the buses had returned and all the drivers and aides had gone home.“I was shaking, I was scared,” she said. “I thought the bus driver has taken my son and ran off with him. I didn’t know if I was ever going to be able to find my son again. An hour seems like forever.