A 4-year-old girl from Eindhoven was forgotten in the bus on Thursday after her school trip. The child had fallen asleep and no one noticed she was still on the bus when the driver drove back to Helvoirt. After a few minutes, the child suddenly went missing. “My head is about to explode,” says her mother Antje Pfaff.
Children from primary school ‘t Palet in Eindhoven went on a school trip to recreation park Duinoord in Helvoirt on Thursday. At the end of the day, the children were taken back to Eindhoven by Van Gompel’s bus. But when the bus had dropped off all the children at the school, Izabella, the 4-year-old girl, suddenly went missing. Because her mother was still working, the child would go to after-school care.
But Izabella had fallen asleep and was still on the bus, which was already on its way back to Helvoirt to pick up a second group. “You check if there is no one left on the bus before it leaves,” says mother Antje angrily. “Forgetting a bag on the bus can still happen, but a child? She is only four years old.”
“No one drives off with my child anymore.”
Antje was at work when she received a call that her child was missing. “I was called by someone from school who said she was back on the bus to Helvoirt,” she says. Antje immediately got into the car and drove to Helvoirt to pick up her daughter herself. “They said that my daughter could go back to Eindhoven on the next bus ride, but I refused. Nobody drives away with my child anymore.”
Izabella herself did not notice any of the panic. She was still asleep when she arrived in Helvoirt. “Someone there woke her up and waited for me with her,” says Antje.
“The child has just been overlooked.”
Mother and daughter are now back home, but Antje is still very angry. “You entrust your children to school, and then you get this. No one immediately realized she was missing. That touches me, do you understand? I don’t trust it all anymore now. Tomorrow my daughter won’t go to school either. I am so angry.”
The principal of the school says that this should never have happened. “The bus is always checked, but the child was sleeping and was simply overlooked,” says director Ruben Adriaans to Omroep Brabant. “We switched with the bus driver and called the mother. It is understandable that she is very angry. We will have to evaluate together how we are going to prevent this in the future.” All parents have been emailed about the incident and Adriaans called Antje to apologize.
Bus company Van Gompel has not yet responded to the incident.