Mom: 5-year-old dropped off at wrong bus stop

CHEROKEE COUNTY, Ga. — A spokesperson for Cherokee County Schools said the district was investigating after a bus driver left a 5-year-old girl at the wrong bus stop with no adult to pick her up.

Tara D'Alterio said she let her daughter, Giana, a kindergarten student at Holly Springs Elementary School, ride the bus for the first time and waited at the stop near her home.

She saw the bus drive by twice, but said it didn't stop to drop off her daughter.

She called the school twice and returned there to see if the bus driver brought her daughter back.

"If she or any child under the age of 8, their parent isn't there to pick them up, then the bus driver takes them back to the school," D'Alterio told Channel 2's Amy Napier Viteri.

When she arrived at the school, she said staff told her Giana was at the home of another parent who lives near where the driver left her.

"He just said, 'Sweetie, get off the bus,'" the 5-year-old told Viteri.

She said she knew it was the wrong place, but was afraid to contradict the driver.

D'Alterio said someone from the school should have called her when they knew where her daughter was, and worried what could have happened had other parents not taken her in.

"The sky's the limit with what could have happened," she explained. "I know for a fact there's actually several registered sex offenders within a one-mile radius of this house."

She said her daughter won't be riding the bus anymore. The district said they're looking into how this happened before they take action.

WSBTV