-Tamara’Shanay-

Cousins!

Footage of a 7 year old overcoming tears as he was dropped off at the wrong stop and instructed to walk home by a substitute bus driver is currently circulating!

According to CBS News, it was nearly 98 degrees in Omaha, Nebraska when Quinci, 7 was put out at the wrong stop. Initially he had no idea where he was at until he began to walk and discovered that he had been dropped off at his former neighborhood.

Reports read that Quinci remembered his former next door neighbor used to live on a nearby street and rang their bell to get help. “My bus driver just left me out here and made me walk home, and I don’t want my mom to worry about me! Please! You need to pick me up if you’re here,” he said fighting back tears.

Thankfully his former neighbor Madison Bilsten was home as she tells local news she had just arrived nearly 5 minutes before Quinci knocked. “At first, I didn’t know what it was — I’m not used to my doorbell ringing. So I waited a minute, and all of a sudden, I just heard crying,” she said.

“I ran up the stairs from my basement, and I looked and saw Quinci out there, and I know him because he used to live next door.”

“At the time that he got to my house, I think it was 98 degrees outside. He was so sweaty; he was disorientated — he thought he was never going to get home. … He told me that he told the bus driver ‘This is not my stop. I don’t know where I’m at.’ And the bus driver told him, ‘Well you need to get off and walk the rest of the way home.“

Madison says she took Quinci insider and called his parents who were equally upset. She says his dad arrived in minutes.

“His dad told me when he got in the car he said, ‘I thought I was lost. I didn’t know where I was at. I didn’t know if I would find you guys again.’”

As we can imagine Quinci’s parents are upset and frustrated about bus driver’s actions.

“Just like any other sane adult in this world would do — would make sure that a child gets home safely. And if a 7-year-old child tells you they don’t know where they are, what’s your first instinct? To figure that out for them,” said Quinci’s mom Makayla Walker said.

She said the school had contacted her earlier, they said there was an issue with her son’s bus but that they were sending a substitute and that the bus had already left.

Makayla explained that when she received the phone call from her former neighbor, “I could hear Quinci — he was hysterical — and I was like, ‘What’s going on?’ … I was shaken. I was so mad I cried. I was mad, and I was sad at the same time. He could have got kidnapped — he could have got hit by a car.”

Madison says that she was also left shaken by the incident.

“I couldn’t sleep last night ‘cause I just thought about the what-if reasons,” she said. “What if he went to the wrong house? What if I wasn’t home? What if he tried someone else in the neighborhood who was creepy or something? You just never know.”

After forwarding details of the incident to the Omaha Public School, the bus driver was confirmed as no longer working with their school.

“They have sympathized with me. The superintendent called me personally; she apologized, and they’re working on it,” said Makayla. “And I went to student transportation today, and they say they’re investigating it. My main point of doing all of this is just to make sure something is done. I feel like every bus driver needs to go through some type of training or something to make sure this doesn’t happen to another child.”

OPS officials are investigating the incident.

Omaha Public Schools forwarded an official statement:

“Our district is committed to safely transporting more than 18,000 students to and from school each day. We take that privilege and responsibility most seriously.“