Mother says daughter was dropped off miles from home by bus driver

A South Bend mother says her daughter was abandoned by a school bus driver.

Now she wants answers.

“He manipulated her,” Danielle Moore says of the school bus driver.

Moore says her daughter,  Jamiyah, was let off a South Bend Community School Corporation bus miles from her home Thursday.

It was just after 5 p.m. following extracurricular activities at school.

Moore and her husband went searching for their daughter.

“It was like after 6:30, and we still couldn’t find her, so he’s driving around, I’m driving around,” Moore said.

That’s when Moore says she got a call from the police.

She says a couple found Jamiyah walking in the dark.

Moore claims discovered the bus driver had dropped her daughter off at Indian Springs apartments, about three miles from her house.

“She told us the bus driver said since she didn’t know her address, she needed to get off there,” Moore said.

Jamiyah, is 11-years-old and has special needs.

Her mother says she’s doing fine now.

Director of SBCSC Transportation Juan Martinez-Legus can’t confirm this happened, but says if it did, there will be a full investigation.

"Any time there’s a situation or a report that something has occurred, we go into a meeting, an investigation, we put an investigative meeting in place. We meet with the staff member, we check every sort of software we may have, on the bus, videos and cameras, things like that to see exactly what took place. We interview people. We don’t leave a stone unturned,” Martinez-Legus said.

Superintendent Dr. Ken Spells says safety is first.

“No question about it, safety is our number one concern,” Spells said.

When it comes to assigning blame, Moore says she wants answers from the district, but most of all she wants an apology from the driver.

“She could have been kidnapped. The people that stopped her could have been some crazy person. There are some really serious people that are out there and she’s very small, she’s vulnerable and she could be manipulated very easily, because she’s manipulated by that bus driver,” Moore said.