A Dallas school bus driver was placed on administrative leave after a 7-year-old was left on the bus Thursday morning.
The second grader at KIPP Destiny Elementary School had fallen asleep in her seat, according to her mother, and the driver did not notice her onboard.
"Why was there not a head count from the school bus company and from the school? Can you explain that to me?" asked her mother, Trina White.
White received a call from the school at about 8 a.m. explaining her daughter, Keymani, had accidentally been taken to the bus company's offices in Lancaster, approximately 15 minutes away. It wasn't until Keymani woke up in her seat that someone at the location noticed she was still onboard, at which point they notified the school.
"There's no excuse for this," White said. "My baby has health issues. She's a sick child. Are you serious?"
According to her mother, Keymani suffers from juvenile diabetes and asthma. Upon arrival to school in the mornings, her blood sugar is checked. The driver who found Keymani drove her directly back to school, according to White, without first checking on her condition.
"I really, really wish that when they found her at that bus barn that they would have dialed 911," said White. "Let's get her checked out first."
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NBC 5 reached out to the school and bus company, Durham School Services. Both declined an interview.
But this is not the first problem the school has had with the company. Following an incident in September, during which a driver dropped students off hours late to school, KIPP vowed to provide monitors on its buses. However, there was no monitor present on Keymani's bus.
In a letter sent out to parents, the school's executive director, Michael Horne, said they only provide monitors for buses carrying solely elementary school students.
According to Durham, there are seven monitors and 13 bus routes for the company.
"Count your students to make sure all of these babies are on this bus because you don't know if you have left a child like this on a bus with serious health issues," said White. "It could have escalated to something else: death."
