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A school bus driver has been accused of driving slowly with the windows up on a 103F day to “punish” children.
Video footage shows children on a Sealy Independent School District bus in Sealy, Texas, pleading with the driver to speed up and get them home, complaining that they are struggling to breathe in the heat.
One child is heard in the footage saying: “Miss, it’s hot back here. These children need to breathe. You need to get us home.”
A student shouts: “It’s not fair”, and another pleads, “Please just take us home.”
The bus driver and the school district could be hit with a civil lawsuit after an attorney representing a mother whose children were on the bus threatening to take legal action.
Attorney Harry Daniels, who represents Coshenna Smith, the mother of two children on the bus, has accused the driver of “punishing” the students and of “child endangerment”. Smith said one of her children, 11, has chronic asthma and “couldn’t breathe”.
It allegedly took the driver over 30 minutes to drive three miles while the children were subjected to heat and they were told to roll their windows up, according to the attorney.
Daniels said: “People are arrested all the time because they accidentally subjected their children to these conditions while they ran into a gas station.
“This woman intentionally put these children at risk for more than half an hour during a 103F heat advisory, and no one has done anything. This isn’t punishment. It’s torture and it’s child endangerment.”
Parents reported the incident to the superintendent, Bryan Hallmark, who said he took the concerns “very seriously”.
“Upon investigating these reports last Thursday, a driver did require a student who was sticking his head out the window to put up his window,” Hallmark said in a statement.
“The driver stopped the bus for approximately 2 minutes and 20 seconds to address the student. During the route the roof hatches and windows were open.”
Hallmark added the bus route has been adjusted to reduce the time on dirt roads so students can get home quicker.
Texas was one of the states affected by record-breaking heat across the US last month. More than 877,000 homes and businesses were without power in the Houston area after Hurricane Beryl struck, leaving residents extremely vulnerable.
