DARTMOUTH, MASS. (WHDH) - A Dartmouth father is frustrated and seeking answers after he said his five-year-old daughter was left alone on a school bus for several hours.
Christopher Matton said the incident left his daughter terrified. Now, he said he wants other parents to be aware.
“She woke up and she was screaming for the bus driver by name,” Matton said.
Matton said his daughter woke up alone on the bus Thursday morning after falling asleep during her ride to Kiddie Kampus Childhood Development and Preschool.
He said she was strapped into her seatbelt and could not get out.
Tremblay’s Bus Company dropped off its bus full of children at Kiddie Kampus in Dartmouth before turning around and parking its bus back in its lot in New Bedford.
Matton said his daughter woke up surrounded by empty buses. According to Dartmouth police, she was there for about five hours.
“I feel saddened, hurt and rage that this actually happened,” Matton said.
Matton said he got a call shortly after 2 p.m. telling him a supervisor found his daughter on the bus and drove her over to Kiddie Kampus.
“I’m like, ‘It’s already 2 o’clock in the afternoon, after 2 o’clock, what do you mean she just got there? Where was she? Who was she with?’” he said. “Nobody.”
Matton told 7NEWS the school told him his daughter had been marked present that morning.
While his daughter is home safe now, Matton said she is traumatized. Now speaking up, he said he’s hoping to get answers and justice for his daughter.
“It hurts me to even look at her now just because I know I see that saddened face, still,” he said.
“This should never, ever happen to no child,” he continued.
7NEWS reached out to both Kiddie Kampus and Tremblay’s Bus Company with questions about this situation but did not hear back.
The Dartmouth Police Department said no charges had been filed as of Friday but said it had turned the case over to the district attorney.
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