Joshua Thornton, whose 13-year-old daughter was on the bus, said students were dropped off at Eugenia Rise, about a 20-minute walk from the usual stop at the Hillpark shops, and left to find their way home. <\/p>\n
\u201cAll the students noticed that the bus was going a different route,\u201d Thornton told the Herald. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s always different drivers apparently. So the kids told the driver that they were going the wrong way and told them which way the route goes. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe driver wasn\u2019t hearing any of it and told the kids to be quiet, shut up and then continued on his route.\u201d<\/p>\n
The driver allegedly \u201cmade them get out\u201d in an unfamiliar area and refused to let the kids back on the bus. <\/p>\n
Thornton said it was \u201cfrightening\u201d and \u201ccould\u2019ve easily gone wrong\u201d, claiming the driver failed to take responsibility for the safety of the students. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe closed the door on them and yelled at them all,\u201d Thornton said. \u201cThe young ones don\u2019t have phones, straight out of primary school into their first year at intermediate and being dropped off somewhere they don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n
His daughter told him a few children looked \u201ca bit distressed\u201d about \u201cnot knowing where they were\u201d. <\/p>\n
Other parents have echoed Thornton\u2019s concerns and questioned what safety measures are in place for their children. <\/p>\n
Kids were left distressed after an Auckland school bus driver allegedly “made them get out” in an unfamiliar area. Photo \/ Michael Craig<\/p>\n
AT general manager network management Duncan McGrory said the bus operator is investigating the incident with the driver involved. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe have followed up with the bus operator and are treating this matter as a priority with them,\u201d McGrory told the Herald. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re sorry to hear these children have had this experience, which would have been upsetting for both them and their parents.<\/p>\n
\u201cSchool trips are a priority for Auckland Transport and our operators. We have made it clear to operators that, where they are having issues, school trips should be prioritised over other contracted or commercial services where possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
McGrory said all bus drivers undergo \u201cmandatory recruitment and screening checks\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to reassure the parents of these children that we take incidents like this seriously. We will continue working closely with the operator to understand how this has happened and what steps can be taken to prevent a similar situation from happening again.\u201d<\/p>\n
McGrory said \u201cany employment or disciplinary matters remain confidential between the operator and their employee\u201d. <\/p>\n
Ritchies did not respond when contacted by the Herald.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joshua Thornton, whose 13-year-old daughter was on the bus, said students were dropped off at Eugenia Rise, about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":631622,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[74,245628,12635,51,9218,682,30482,1061,19552,28157,28796,1866,147537,1345,78,2203,1362,111,139,69,36200,28758,4062,6753,1240,213,165,1961,6859,6382,112,664,309600,686,102,309601],"class_list":["post-631621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-after","tag-afterschool","tag-area","tag-auckland","tag-before","tag-being","tag-bus","tag-children","tag-driver","tag-dropped","tag-drops","tag-find","tag-frightening","tag-home","tag-in","tag-journey","tag-made","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-potentially","tag-probe","tag-school","tag-shut","tag-south","tag-sports","tag-their","tag-this","tag-told","tag-took","tag-transport","tag-turn","tag-unfamiliar","tag-week","tag-with","tag-youngsters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=631621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/631622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}