Kindergarten pupil left stranded on bus for hours
First On 7: Angry parents have lashed out after a little girl was left locked inside a kindergarten bus for more than five hours in country Victoria.
Little Alexis Batt is just four weeks into kinder but yesterday learned a very harsh lesson - a bus ride can turn into something horrific.
The four-year-old was left trapped alone on the bus, which had been returned by its driver to the depot, after she failed to hop off when it stopped at her kindergarten.
Teachers assumed she was absent because of the local Wimmera Field Days and her parents presuming she had been safely dropped off.
"I showed up at 1.30 to pick her up and the kinder said she wasn't there," dad Nathan Butt told Seven News.
"They hadn't seen her, she wasn't there today. I was frantic. I got them to call the bus company and the police."
Alexis was picked up at 8am in the Wimmera town of Brim and driven more than 20 kilometres to the Warracknabeal kinder, then onto the nearby depot where she remained undiscovered until 1.30pm.
"It could have been life or death," Mr Batt said. "We took her to the doctor and he said it was just too close, too close."
She was somewhat dehydrated but happy to be reunited with her parents.
In a statement, the bus company said: "The driver found the child on the bus in good spirits and well. Shortly thereafter a parent assaulted the bus driver and the driver is obviously shaken because of this."
Mr Batt has another version of events.
"She was covered with sweat and urine soaked through," he said.
"I spoke to him and then he tried to fight me."
The bus driver would not speak to Seven News on camera today, saying his lawyer had advised him to remain quiet until an investigation by the Education Department and Public Transport Victoria is completed.
