JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A Jacksonville family wants answers after their son with special needs was not dropped off at his day care.
A bus driver was supposed to take the 3-year-old to Dreams Come True Learning Center once he left school, but when his mom went to pick him up, he wasn’t there.
“We thought maybe the bus was running late,” said his mother Courtney Hughes. “We didn’t know what happened. We didn’t know where he was, so we tried to reach out to the dispatch and figure out where he was at the time.”
In a panic, Hughes called her husband and the day care director to see where he could be.
“My day care director, who has contacts with a lot of people, a lot of day care people, she reached out to some whose kids rode the bus,” said Hughes. “When she reached out to them, we found out, in fact, after describing what he looks like, we found out from the parents that the bus driver was trying to give him to other parents. So she took him off the bus, and she tried to give them to the wrong people.”
At that moment, an hour had already passed.
“I’m on the phone with dispatch and I’m screaming and I’m crying now because I didn’t know what to do,” said Hughes. “I felt like my heart fell out of my chest.”
Two hours later, Hughes was finally reunited with her son.
The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office was called and spoke to witnesses as well as the driver.
According to the police report, the bus driver was hostile when speaking to officers and gave a statement saying, “I don’t care; I just had mouth surgery.”
Police also called the Duval County School Board Dispatch.
News4JAX reached out to DCPS for comment, but it did not immediately respond.