NYC special ed students left trapped on school bus for over 4 hours last Dec., probe reveals

An NYC school bus driver failed to deliver six nonverbal special education students to school for nearly four and a half hours last December — leaving one child lying soaking wet in her own urine in a bus seat, investigators said Friday.  Driver Eric Chery bounced between the wrong schools and completely missed his morning drop-off window at PS 289 in Crown Heights on Dec.16, 2025, according to the Special Commissioner of Investigation for the New York City School District, Anastasia Coleman.“It is highly disturbing that six nonverbal children were left on a school bus for hours while their whereabouts remained unknown to school officials,” Coleman said in a statement.“These particularly vulnerable students rely on the adults entrusted with their care to ensure their safety.”Instead of pulling up between 8:20 a.m.

and 9:00 a.m., Chery didn’t show up until 1:25 p.m.— nearly five hours late.School staff then contacted Consolidated Bus Transit — the contractor who employed Chery — around 10 a.m.

but received no response.Official Department of Education GPS data later revealed that Chery was outside one student’s home as late as 10:59 a.m., despite the fact that Chery claimed all students were picked up by 10 a.m.A mother of two of the students used tracking devices tucked inside their backpacks to determine that her children were traveling all across Brooklyn as well. At 11:45 a.m., a bus dispatcher told school staff the driver was lost but said he would arrive in 15 minutes.He never showed — forcing school officials to report the missing children to the NYPD.When the bus finally arrived at P.S.289, also known as “The Brower School,” in Crown Heights around 1:25 p.m., school staff inspected the bus and found that one child had urinated on herself, removed her own diaper and leggings and was laying down flat on the bus floor soaking wet, investigators said. Germina Thomas, a bus matron of nearly 20 years, admitted to investigators that s...