Boy boards wrong bus, ends up in Mexico
Categories: Kids 5-7, Health & safety, In the news, Weird but true, Education
The town of Yuma, Arizona sits very near the border of Mexico in the southwest part of the state. It sits so close, in fact, that a wrong turn may lead you right out of the country. As will boarding the wrong school bus, which is exactly what a 6-year-old boy did last week.
The boy was supposed to be on his way home from school, but accidentally got on the wrong bus. He got off the bus at an unfamiliar stop and wandered into San Luis Rio Colorado, Mexico. His mother said he was disoriented and thought he might walk to his grandfather's house, which is in Mexico. The boy was rescued by a passerby, who returned him safely to his home.
Officials at Gadsden Elementary School District are looking into the situation and promise to correct any failures they find the school transportation system. I think a small boy being allowed on the wrong bus and ending up in another country where he is picked up by a total stranger pretty much qualifies as a failure of the system.
The boy was supposed to be on his way home from school, but accidentally got on the wrong bus. He got off the bus at an unfamiliar stop and wandered into San Luis Rio Colorado, Mexico. His mother said he was disoriented and thought he might walk to his grandfather's house, which is in Mexico. The boy was rescued by a passerby, who returned him safely to his home.
Officials at Gadsden Elementary School District are looking into the situation and promise to correct any failures they find the school transportation system. I think a small boy being allowed on the wrong bus and ending up in another country where he is picked up by a total stranger pretty much qualifies as a failure of the system.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
LS 8-21-2008 @ 3:54PM
Oh great. Something else for me to worry over... I just put my Kindergartner on the bus to school for the first time ever, this week... and on his way home, he has to switch busses. Fortunately, we live in a very small town, and the bus drivers know to watch out for him.
Here's a completely unrelated question.... my spell-check just caught "busses" as being misspelled. But buses looks totally wrong. Which is it???
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Dave 8-21-2008 @ 4:26PM
How does an article lik ethis even get published? The content is okay, but the typos need to be caught by the author, the editor or the proofreader! And "buses" is correct.
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ame s 8-21-2008 @ 4:32PM
Although I have my issues with my county's public system, I will say this for the school my 8 year old daughter attends. The bus riders (and car riders) are gathered together before the busses arrive. The first couple of weeks of school, the staff puts color coded stickers on the children's shirts. Children learn their bus "color". Bus rider lists are checked as the children line up, and checked again as they are put on the bus. Someone does a walk through the bus rider wait area and the nearby bathrooms to make sure no one was left behind.
For car riders, we are given numbered hang tags for our rear view mirror. The staff has a list of the numbers and childrens' names. If we forget to bring our tag or loose it, we have to go to the office and officially sign our child out of school, even those of us the staff has known on sight for years.
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Eve 8-21-2008 @ 6:39PM
I live in Yuma and love it here. My kid just began Kinder this week. One question which has not been brought up despite many council meetings is why the heck do we have have school buses going to Mexico anyway?
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the goddess anna 8-21-2008 @ 6:46PM
I was just about to ask that same question. Nobody who lives on the Mexican side of the border should be riding the school buses and going to the American school anyway.
I would like to say I'm surprised this blurb doesn't mention that, but I'm not. Apparently very few people care about the sovreignty of our borders anyway, and find nothing odd about our school buses crossing international boundaries (apparently with no document check, or the boy would have been found before crossing into Mexico).
Tamyu 8-22-2008 @ 12:22AM
This is something I`m definitely glad I don`t have to worry about.
My son rides the bus to and from kindergarten, but there are so many precautions in place that it would be virtually impossible for them to lose him if they weren`t trying.
All the kids wear hats with a huge pin labeled with the bus color and number. The bus drivers have a picture list of all the students riding their bus, which they check... A teacher always rides the bus with the students - and 9 times out of 10, it`s a teacher close to the kids so they know who is who and who goes where.
They also refuse to release the children if there is not a parent or someone verified by the parents waiting for them. (There are special cards that parents fill out with specific information that are compared to a copy you file with the school.)
Definitely better than my kindergarten bus experience - I was put on the wrong bus multiple times, and kicked out of the bus at the wrong stop more than once.
I too am very curious about buses crossing borders. That just doesn`t seem right, no matter how close to the border the school is. And if the bus itself didn`t go across the border to drop the child off - it seems like it wouldn`t be so easy for a small child to simply wander over it.
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rowe 8-22-2008 @ 8:05AM
my 6 year old son rode the school bus for the first time, he was on the right bus he just felt lost and confused so he gave our home number to his busmate who called us and told us our son rode the wrong bus and got dropped at some pole some where...after driving around worried sick to my stomach searching for that pole I went to the school and they called all the buses looking for him, they told me to go home and they'll call me when they find my son...on our way home we saw the bus my son was in...I almost jumped out of my car....I was so happy and relieved...that he was okay. I didn't let him go to school the next day...he is just too precious to me...I don't let him ride the bus anymore...not because its not safe...he's just not ready. right after this happened to our son I saw this on the news...thank God he's home safe. I can imagine how worried sick his family was.
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