A Brant County resident is facing a careless driving charge in connection with a child being dragged by a bus after getting caught in the vehicles doors.
OPP say the investigation surrounds an afternoon incident Nov. 1 in which a five-year-old child was attempting to get off a school bus when the doors closed, trapping part of his body.
“The bus travelled 15 to 20 feet with the child’s legs dangling outside the bus before it stopped,” police spokesperson Const. Conrad Vitalis said in a release.
A 64-year-old driver is facing the charge following an investigation in which the incident was captured through a home surveillance system.
The boy’s father Derek Tappen shared the tale with Global News last week, saying he scrambled to his son’s aid.
“He got both feet onto the ground at which point the bus door shut around him, pinning him half-in, half-out of the bus,” recounted Tappen.
The bus driver took off, dragging William several feet, with Derek and his older son running and screaming behind the bus. The driver — alerted by his screams, Tappen says — eventually stopped.
“Terrified,” said Tappen, when asked what was going through his mind in the moment. “I honestly thought I was going to have to get an ambulance for him and we were going to end up in the hospital because all I could see was him sliding out from the bottom of the door and ending up underneath the wheels.”
Aside from a few scrapes and bruises to his leg, Tappen says his son is physically OK. Emotionally, however, is a different story. Tappen says his son now refuses to ride the bus and he has to drive him to school every day.
Tappen says he thinks simple safety mechanisms built into the doors could’ve made this near-tragedy completely preventable.
“Now they’ve switched over to a push-button system instead of the old-school long bars that they had to physically open and close, so they don’t have to check the door anymore which I think is a big issue with that,” says Tappen.
The bus company, Voyago, told Global News in a statement it is investigating the incident.
An probe is also underway by the Grand Erie School Board.