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Mother: Kindergartner Put on Wrong Bus, Walked Mile Home

A White Settlement, North Texas, mother is upset her 5-year-old son was put on a school bus at North Elementary School, a White Settlement ISD school in Fort Worth, when he was supposed to remain at the school for an independent after-school daycare program Wednesday.

Ashley Holder told NBC 5 her son, Gabriel Muntu, told a substitute teacher he was not supposed to ride the bus, but he was put on the bus anyway. The driver dropped him off nearly a mile from their apartment, and Gabriel walked home alone.

“He had told his substitute teacher that he was not a bus rider, and they still put him on the bus,” Holder said.

Her son crisscrossed Saddle Road before making his way across Clifford Street, a busy four-lane road, which his mom says her son told her he crossed more than once.

“He dodged cars to try to get home and I asked him, I was like, 'Were there cars, did you see them?' And he was like, 'Oh, they stopped for me,'” Holder said. “If they wouldn’t have stopped, that could have been my son’s life and that’s the only reason why I’m saying something.”

Holder said she was shocked when she found out what happened.

“I felt sick and I cried because that’s my baby, you know. He could have been hit by a car. He could have been kidnapped. Anything could have happened,” Holder said.

White Settlement ISD officials say there was a lapse in procedure at the school, and a substitute teacher was involved. The school has apologized to the family and is now reviewing current procedures to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

“I asked him to show me where they dropped him off, thinking it was just around the neighborhood. No, they dropped him off over a mile away,” Holder said. “He’s supposed to have surgery on his feet and he walked over a mile with bad feet.”

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