MAPLEWOOD, Mo. — Parents in the Maplewood-Richmond Heights School District are raising concerns after their kindergartener was put on a school bus and dropped off at an unknown location.
It was a typical Friday afternoon for James Kimball until he received a frightening phone call.
"We've been restless ever since this all happened, thinking what could have happened," said James.
On the phone was the principal of the Maplewood-Richmond Heights Early Childhood Center, letting Kimball know that Ozzie, their 5-year-old son with special needs, had gotten separated from his classmates on his way to after-school care and wound up on a school bus full of other children.
"It was only because another parent noticed that he was by himself with no backpack or anything that they realized something was wrong. We don't know where he was dropped off. We don't know if it was on our street. We don't know if it was in a different part of the town. We don't know any details about it," James Kimball said.
James and his wife, Echo Kimball, drop off and pick up their son Ozzie daily, so they're baffled by how he got on a bus he was never supposed to be on.
"We've been angry, we've been confused and we've been scared because we came this close to losing our child in a situation that he should never have been put in the first place," James Kimball said. "And the scarier part is that even if somebody had found him after the fact, with him having his language delay, he likely would not have been able to properly communicate with anybody if they had asked him his name or where he's supposed to be or who he's with."
A Maplewood-Richmond Heights School District spokesman told 5 On Your Side in a statement, "The District is aware of the incident, has been in contact with the family and is investigating."
The couple posted about the incident on Facebook, hoping to find and thank the mom who found Ozzie. But to their surprise, they found other parents in the district whose children had experienced similar situations.
"I've heard from some moms that they've had incidents where their kids have gotten on the wrong bus, or they've gotten dropped off at the wrong bus stop," Echo Kimball said. "They've gotten put on buses and sent home on days that the parents were picking them up at the school and vice versa. Knowing that this is not the first time and there have been other incidences doesn't help. I want to know how they let this happen and how he got misplaced."
The family says the school told them they would get a follow-up about what happened, but they haven't heard anything since Friday.
"The part that scares us is the fact that somebody with his language delay, that's getting therapy at the school for that issue, was able to slip through so many factors and so many adults to wind up in the situation that he was in in the first place," James Kimball said. "We need to know that it's not going to happen with our kid again because that's not an option, but also that it's not going to happen with anybody else's kids."
The Kimballs are still searching for the unidentified mother who found their son to thank her.
"We're super grateful to the mom who found him," James Kimball said. "She immediately contacted the school to find out what was happening and get him back to us. Thank God she was smart enough to realize something was going on that didn't make sense with a five-year-old wandering around by himself."
"I'm very thankful that a nice person was the one that found him, but it easily could not have been a nice person," Echo Kimball said. "He could have been kidnapped, or he could have been hit by a car."