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Chesco officials: Child left in school van five hours

Police and school officials in Chester County say they are investigating how a 7-year-old child was left alone in a parked school van for more than five hours in Kennett Square last week.

Police and school officials in Chester County say they are investigating how a 7-year-old child was left alone in a parked school van for more than five hours in Kennett Square last week.

The child, a pupil in the Kennett Consolidated School District, was the only passenger the bus driver had to pick up that day. But instead of dropping the child off at school, the driver parked the van for the day, apparently unaware the child had not gotten off. The driver was fired.

Police and the district are investigating the incident, school officials wrote in a letter to parents Tuesday.

"Words cannot express our level of dismay and disgust when learning what happened," Superintendent Barry Tomasetti wrote.

A Krapf Bus Co. school van picked up the student around 8:30 a.m. March 31, the letter said.

The child was the only passenger on the vehicle, which was driven by a licensed driver from Krapf, the West Chester-based bus service used by the school district.

The driver then drove the van to Krapf's Kennett Square depot and parked. The child, on the bus, never showed up in class.

The child was discovered more than five hours later, after the mother spoke to the school district on the phone.

The driver was terminated that day, said Shawn McGlinchey, an employee of Krapf's safety department.

Though the driver had the necessary child-check clearances, he violated rules requiring him to check the bus for passengers, the school district said.

Krapf follows Pennsylvania Department of Transportation safety procedures, McGlinchey said Wednesday.

"We have great drivers working for us, and this driver failed to follow the procedure," McGlinchey said.

The district asked Krapf to talk to all bus operators about their responsibilities for schoolchildren and said it would review its own absence-from-school notification procedures.

"This incident in no way reflects who we are as a caring district," the school district's statement said.

The district said it would not comment further while the incident was under investigation.

In July, a Bucks County school bus driver left a 4-year-old girl on a van for four hours. The girl was unharmed.