Mom speaks out after child gets on wrong SBCSC bus, lost for nearly two hours

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — A South Bend woman says her 11-year-old son didn't get off at his bus stop Friday afternoon. Two hours later, he had brought him on a bus full of Riley High School students.

"It gave me an insight of how some of these parents feel that haven’t been able to find their child because that was the worst almost two hours of my life, not knowing where my kid was at all.”

Just after 3 p.m. Friday, Brittney Hodges started to wonder where her 11-year-old son was at. Karson is in fifth grade and goes to Marshal Traditional School and his bus stop is just around the corner. After a few minutes goes by, she checked the bus tracker and saw the bus was at Riley High School. 

Panicked, Brittney immediately called the school.

"The last that I heard from the school with the initial call was that they had no clue where he was at the moment they were trying to pull up cameras, which never got pulled up by the time we found him, which was at that point almost two hours after school was over.

She also called transportation.

"They told me directly that they had checked all of their buses. He had never gotten on any of their buses."

She says she waited at home while her husband, aunt and other family members went driving around looking for Karson. While waiting, Hodges also called the cops to help find her son.  Almost two hours later, she got a call back from the police department. 

"He got onto the wrong bus because it had the number eight in it like the bus he rides and he fell asleep," said Hodges.

Karson was brought back home on a bus now full of Riley High School students. Hodges says the best way to move forward from this traumatic experience is to acknowledge that mistakes happen. Her son got on the wrong bus, but she also says the school and transportation have to respond with a sense of urgency in these cases.

"I would say with the buses, there needs to be some kind of regulations of when you’re done with your route, check your seats. For as long as he was on the bus, there’s no way that you were still doing a route at that point. Not only that, but if you’re a bus driver, get to know your students enough that if one stands out, you should know.”

Hodges also says the district needs a better plan in situations like this, because it shouldn't take nearly two hours to pull up cameras to locate a missing child. 

SBCSC sent the following statement to ABC57:

"We are aware of the incident Friday afternoon in which a student boarded a bus that was not assigned to his route, and we apologize for the concern this caused his family. The student remained aboard a district bus under adult supervision throughout the incident and was transported home safely.

We are reviewing the circumstances with our Transportation Department to better understand what occurred and how to prevent similar incidents in the future.

We are unable to accommodate an on-camera interview at this time but can provide this written statement. Out of respect for student privacy, we cannot share additional details about the individual student."