Exclusive: After school bus drops 4-year-old at stop alone, family reacts

HARLEM, Manhattan (PIX11) — He’s 4 years old, and at the end of his first day of school, he was let off of his school bus alone at one of the busiest intersections in Manhattan.

The boy’s family is upset and speaking out because they don’t want the same mistake to happen to anyone else, they said.

They said that the location where he was dropped off, 135th Street and Lenox Avenue, has a variety of potential hazards for a kindergartner. His family said clearer instructions from the boy’s school regarding the location of the drop-off point would have helped to prevent what happened.

“There’s no stating where we’re supposed to stand,” said Nesha Moses, the mother of Ryan, the boy.

Moses shared the drop-off instructions email from the school, HCZ Promise Academy 2, with PIX11 News. The email only lists the intersection for the drop-off without listing which corner or a specific address.

On Wednesday, at the listed drop-off time, Moses said she was waiting for her son at the intersection’s southeast corner. The bus stopped just past the northwest corner.

According to his family, the bus driver let the four-year-old boy out after he told the driver that some people who happened to be standing there were his parents.

“You’re supposed to have a parent or guardian present,” Moses said in an interview on Thursday at the location. “You didn’t I.D. them. That’s wrong.”

“Two complete strangers had my son,” Moses continued, “saying that they see my son trying to walk across the street by himself.”

The two good Samaritans spoke to the boy who’d just been accidentally placed in their care.

What they said to him was what the kindergartener spoke about on Thursday.

“She said I can’t go to the subway,” the boy said.

He said he’d started walking into the street to go to a subway entrance across 135th Street. His dad works on MTA trains, and the boy is looking for him after his first day of school.

Moreover, Ryan left his book bag on the bus, which the driver returned to the school on East 112th Street.

“It would have been better if he dropped my child at the school,” she said. “That’s reasonable. But his book bag at the school, and that’s it?” she asked.

For its part, HCZ Promise Academy 2 issued a statement:

“We are deeply concerned that a 4-year-old scholar was allowed to leave the bus without an adult present to pick them up, by a bus driver contracted by the New York City Department of Education. Although we had no control over this unfortunate incident, we are doing everything in our power to ensure that our scholars are safe and that this does not occur again.”

HCZ Promise Academy 2 Spokesperson

PIX11 News also contacted the bus company, Consolidated Bus Transit. A manager there said this is a matter involving the Office of Pupil Transportation at New York City Public Schools.

PIX11 News has reached out to that office for comment but has not immediately heard back.

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