A Missouri second-grader collided a school bus into another bus in front of her elementary school while the driver was allegedly trying to give the children a safety lesson.
Parents of students on two buses outside Three Trails Elementary in Independence, about 10 miles from Kansas City, received an email about their children being involved in “a minor incident” on school grounds during their morning drop-off on Oct. 17, according to Fox 2 Now.
They were told one of the buses had “slowly rolled into another while on school grounds,” but the school allegedly left out that a student was at the helm of the massive transportation vehicle when the minor crash occurred.
Alannah Cheffen, 7, said she was called to the front of the bus by the driver, who was instructing the kids what to do if there was a medical emergency, like how to open doors and windows, Fox 2 Now reported.
Cheffen said she and other students on the bus were asked to volunteer to help with the lesson, but when no one wanted to, the driver called her to the front to assist and put her in the driver’s seat.
“She told me to press that thing and when I pressed it, it made the whole bus go backwards. Then I pressed the gas button and it stopped out of nowhere,” Cheffen told the outlet.
The second grader’s older sister, Amiyah Brown, who was onboard the bus during the incident, said the driver barely reacted when the minor collision happened while her sister was behind the wheel.
“When it happened and we hit the back of the bus, she just didn’t say nothing, and she went back and she just parked it like nothing was happening,” Brown said.
But Ambrosia Holt, the girl’s mother, told the outlet she learned from her daughters that Cheffen was in the driver’s seat during the incident, and the school failed to inform her that her daughter — not the driver —caused the bus-on-bus collision.
“I was blown away. It was actually my child that was instructed to be behind the wheel of a bus,” Ambrosia Holt, Cheffen’s mother, told the outlet.
While no one was injured during the incident, and the school told parents the day continued “as normal,” Holt questioned why she didn’t hear about her daughter’s involvement in the incident from the elementary school officials, nor was she informed the safety lesson was happening.
“If I didn’t know that they have our children doing this, I’m pretty sure there’s other parents that do not know. So that’s my biggest thing … because, like I said, this could have resulted into something super big,” Cheffen’s mother told the outlet.
The following day, other parents told the outlet that this was the first they had heard of a student-involved collision.
“It’s not something I would be comfortable with my kid being on a bus and being either A) expected to help into the driver side or B) being on a bus with another kid who is driving,” a parent of a student at the elementary, Sheila Harrison, told the outlet.
The Independence Police Department told the outlet they were not notified of the collision.
It remains to be seen how the bus got into motion while the student was behind the wheel or if the district is investigating the school bus driver.
