5-year-old girl dropped off at wrong bus stop on first day of school, family finds her left alone

FREEDOM, Pa. — A Beaver County family is demanding answers after a 5-year-old girl was dropped off at the wrong bus stop on her first day of school.

It happened on Monday afternoon in Freedom. A group of children had just been let off a school bus along a busy road, blocks away from the scheduled stop, according to parents.

Beth and Anthony Gaus said their granddaughter, Ria, was supposed to be dropped off at 4th Avenue and 6th Street, but when the bus arrived, Ria wasn’t on it.

“I had to chase the bus down,” Beth Gaus said. “She closed the doors and started to take off and our grandchild wasn’t there. I was beating on the door to say, ‘You forgot my grandchild.’”

The Gaus family said they didn’t receive any communication from the school district or bus company, ABC Transit, about where Ria had been dropped off when they called in the moment. Instead, it was her parents, returning from an appointment, who happened to spot her walking alone and in tears on the side of 3rd Avenue.

“She was crying, thinking she wasn’t going to get to go home from school,” Beth said.

The Freedom Area School District superintendent told Channel 11 the drop-off location was a mistake and said a plan is now in place to prevent it from happening again after speaking with Ria’s parent.

But that provides little comfort for these grandparents, who said older students had been helping to comfort Ria and figure out how to get her home safely.

“The bus driver was very nonchalant about it,” Anthony Gaus said. “She didn’t even care that she was missing kids. I asked several times, and she was more worried about moving on than finding our kids, which was bothersome to both of us.”

These two want ABC Transit to improve its policies, including making sure young children aren’t let off the bus unless an adult is present.

Channel 11 reached out to ABC Transit to ask what went wrong and what policies are in place to prevent this from happening again. We have not yet received a response.

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