A substitute school bus driver in Georgia earned the ire of panicked parents after refusing to drop off their children at the designated bus stop. Mayhem ensued in the Atlanta distant suburb of Dallas, Georgia, on Jan. 19 after an elementary school bus driver refused to let several students off at their regular stop. Video shows the moment the driver pulls away from the stop with some of the children still on the bus. The parents of the Allgood Elementary School students waited for their children per usual on Wednesday. To their surprise, the driver wouldn’t let some of the students off the bus.
The driver was seen on the video trying to push two parents off the bus who were trying to collect their children, which prompted one to smack the driver. As the angered driver sped off, the children on the school bus were heard screaming as one parent yelled, “You don’t do that! Are you nuts? Hey! Hey!”
One parent, Samantha Lee, said her child was scared and thought she was being kidnapped as the bus drove off. “She thought that the bus driver was kidnapping her,” said Lee. “The parents were asking her over and over again, ‘Please open the door. Please let us see our children.'” It was after the school bus stopped again at the next stop that several frantic parents pulled their children from the bus. Several parents also pulled their children off the bus from the back door. The bus driver has been suspended pending an investigation.
The Paulding County School District released a statement saying they were investigating the incident while explaining the breakdown of the deboarding process.
“The Paulding County School District is investigating an incident that occurred Wednesday afternoon at a school bus stop at the intersection of Old Harris Road and Jimmy Lee Smith Parkway,” read the statement. “An Allgood Elementary School bus was being driven by a substitute driver as the normal driver for that route had fallen ill that morning. A large number of students typically deboard the bus each day at this particular bus stop. This afternoon that process broke down as the substitute driver was trying to manage the release of the younger students.”
