13-Year-Old Mass. Boy With Autism Left on School Bus for 6 Hours, Aunt Says

A Massachusetts boy spent six hours locked on a school bus Thursday after he fell asleep and no one noticed, according to the boy's aunt.

Jessica Reyes says she thought it was a joke when her 13-year-old nephew Jamie, who has autism, told her what happened.

“He said he never made it to school. He fell asleep on the bus, and I’m like, ‘What?” Reyes recalled.

But Reyes, who is Jamie's legal guardian, quickly realized it wasn't a joke when she called her nephew's teacher.

“She’s like, ‘No. Actually, he wasn’t in my class,’” Reyes said.

Jamie never showed up to school at the Central Massachusetts Collaborative because he ended up locked on a Worcester school bus for six hours, Reyes says. According to Reyes, Jamie fell asleep on the bus in the morning and when he woke up in the bus lot on Fremont Street hours later, he was alone and scared.

"He was scared, nervous. No food, no water, no toilet, which is for six hours — that’s just — I don’t even think an adult would be able to stand that,” she said.

According to Reyes, the bus driver dropped Jamie off later that afternoon. Reyes says there are two adults who ride on the bus, and she doesn't understand how neither one of them saw him sleeping -- especially since it's a small bus with only a handful of students.

“There’s a driver and a bus monitor, and there’s only five kids on the school bus. So, how do you — if you know that five kids got on the bus, you need to make sure that five kids get off the bus,” she said.

Reyes told NBC10 Boston that the bus driver is on leave as the school district investigates what happened.

NBC10 Boston reached out to both the school and the school district during business hours on Friday but has not heard back.