OPELOUSAS, La. (KLFY) — An Opelousas mother is speaking out after she says her son’s bus driver started driving away while he was stuck in the bus door.
Surveillance video from their home caught the incident on camera.
The video shows what happened when her son, a student at Family Worship Christian Academy, tried to get off the bus last Monday.
You can hear children on the school bus screaming in panic as the bus driver begins driving away from this student’s home, unaware he was trapped in the glass door.
“I cried. Hearing my child scream for his life and then watching him with the bus roll, no parents want to see anything like that,” Lakisha Victorian says.
Victorian explains when her son, 8 was getting off the bus, the bus driver accidentally shut the door too soon.
His arms and head became trapped, being squeezed by the closed door.
“He was stuck. There was no way for him to try to hit on the door. All he could do was holler. That’s the only thing he could do was holler,” she told News Ten.
The video shows the bus traveling several feet before stopping. Victorian says the bus driver’s excuse did not make her feel better.
“She was like, ‘Well, I took my eyes off of him because somebody was standing up on the bus,’ but the kids were standing up trying to warn her that my son was stuck in the door,” she explained.
The mother says the school did not file an incident report or call her to tell her there had been an accident.
She says more should have been done, especially since doctors determined her son suffered a concussion during the incident.
“We trust our kids with the bus driver, with the school, and for them to come back in one piece. It was hard,” Victorian said.
She says the school brushed off the incident and didn’t investigate thoroughly, as the bus driver was never suspended.
She adds that her son will return to school for the first time again Tuesday, and she’s sharing what happened to him in hopes schools will take note.
“It’s a lot, but that’s all I want is for everybody to see what happened and make sure it doesn’t happen again. Get a helper or if she can’t control the whole bus then somebody else needs to be on that bus,” she said.
Victorian says the bus driver is employed by Family Christian Worship Academy
News Ten has reached out twice to the school, though we have yet to hear back from administration about this incident.