OMAHA, Neb. — A school bus driver in Nebraska is no longer behind the wheel after a child says he was told to get off the bus, even after telling the driver he was at the wrong home.
Video from a doorbell camera obtained by WOWT shows 7-year-old Quincy Walker crying and confused after getting off the bus. Walker, who used to live nearby, walked to a home that he recognized as belonging to a former-next-door neighbor and the mother of his friend, Jackson, the station reported.
“Jackson’s mom, my bus driver just left me out here and made me walk home, and I don’t want my mom to worry about me! Please! You need to pick me up if you’re here!” Quincy is seen crying in the video.
“It was heart-breaking when she sent me the video, I cried,” Quincy’s mother, Makayla Walker, told KETV. “If she wouldn’t have been home, then where would he have gone? How would he have gotten home?”
Fortunately, Madison Bilsten was home, and told WOWT that she had arrived home just five minutes earlier.
“At first, I didn’t know what it was — I’m not used to my doorbell ringing. So I waited a minute, and all of a sudden, I just heard crying,” Bilsten told WOWT. “I ran up the stairs from my basement, and I looked and saw Quincy out there, and I know him because he used to live next door.”
Quincy said that after he was picked up at school, he was taken to the wrong address.
“He said he told the bus driver, ‘This is not my stop. I don’t know where I’m at,’ and the bus driver told him, ‘You can get off and you can walk home,’ … is exactly what he said, ‘You can walk home,’” Makayla Walker told KETV.
Walker told the station that she had updated the school when she moved to a new address last February, and there had never been an issue with drop-offs until the regular driver was off and a substitute driver was on duty.
“I couldn’t sleep last night ‘cause I just thought about the what-if reasons,” Bilsten told WOWT. “What if he went to the wrong house? What if I wasn’t home? What if he tried someone else in the neighborhood who was creepy or something? You just never know.”
In a statement to KETV, Omaha Public Schools said, “Investigating the incident, the drop off occurred at the address on file for our family. We regret that this situation did not meet our standard of care for students. The substitute driver for our contracted service is no longer transporting students in our district.”