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Boy with special needs, 9, mistakenly dropped off at home

A mother is demanding answers after a school bus driver mistakenly dropped off her 9-year-old autistic boy outside his home.

Erica Satterwhite tells Channel 2 Action News the boy was supposed to be at an after school program. When the boy was dropped off, no one was home leaving him outside his home unattended for 3 hours.

Satterwhite told Channel 2's Nefertiti Jaquez she notified Caleb's teacher and staffers at Sawyer Elementary School that her son would be attending the after-school program and she would be there to pick him up when they let out.

“I made sure to make them aware that he was to stay in school so I don’t understand,” says Erica Satterwhite.

But when she showed up, Caleb was nowhere to be found.

“He's not here. He didn't ever come today. I'm like what do you mean? They're like he didn't come today,” Satterwhite recalled.

When she rushed home, she found her son sprawled out on the family’s porch, overheated from the summer temperatures.

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Satterwhite told Channel 2 she feared the worst.

“Somebody could have been watching him and took him away and I would have never saw my child again,” she said.

This isn’t the first time this has happened to her son. Satterwhite says this happened at the end of the school year last May.

We took those concerns to the Superintendent of Marietta City Schools, Dr. Grant Rivera. He admitted the staff made a mistake.

“I'm very aware of the opportunities where we should have seized to do better," he said over the telephone.

But when we asked him if anyone would be reprimanded for what happened to Caleb,  he said no.

"At this point based on my investigation I do not believe that there is any personnel action that needs to be taken," Dr. Rivera said.

Dr. Rivera says they have reviewed their procedures and will go above and beyond to ensure that his never happens again.

"They need to take this seriously because somebody's child could end up dead, hurt or anything," Satterwhite said.