A Milwaukee kindergartner named Cameron Smith was left on a GO Riteway school bus on Jan. 8 after falling asleep on the ride home. The young boy’s family is seeking to take legal action against the company and district since finding him in the school bus parking lot that same night.
Cameron’s mom, Chenequa Byers-Smith, explained in the police report that he was unharmed but was exceptionally emotionally distraught.
Her five-year-old son managed to call for help by honking the bus horn while locked in the lot, but “it could have ended very differently had we not thought to go up there,” she told outlets.
Byers-Smith explained that she realized something was wrong after Cameron didn’t arrive home by 5 in the evening since that’s the latest GO Riteway ever dropped him off. After calling Milwaukee Academy of Science, his school, and the bus company, she reported him missing an hour later. She posted a photo of her son on Facebook and requested police search the school bus lot. Unfortunately, officers searched her house first to gather more information.
When the police department failed to, Byers-Smith’s family went to the GO Riteway lot and heard Cameron honking the horn. They found him after they hopped over the barbed wire fence, and Cameron figured out how to turn on the bus lights.
Byers-Smith told the outlet that her son boarded the school bus at around 3:30 and was found four hours later. She rushed Cameron to the Children’s Wisconsin Hospital to get checked out.
She said, “He was very cold and tired, but he was finally relieved that somebody knew where he was.”
“He was OK, just really tired.”
Byers-Smith learned that Cameron fell asleep on the bus ride home and woke up in the lot. She’s pushing for the bus driver and the company to be punished.
GO Riteway has released a statement about the incident, stating that the employee responsible failed to follow the required safety protocols for an end-of-shift and has been terminated. The company agreed to continue cooperating with the police as they further investigated the incident.