A daycare driver allegedly left a six-year-old girl sleeping on a ‘very hot’ bus after neglecting to do her job of checking the vehicle.
Barbra Ledbetter, 49, picked up children using a daycare shuttlebus on Monday and after arriving at All About Kidz, did not notice that one of the kids had fallen asleep on a back seat, according to the Oviedo Police Department.
An hour and two minutes later, the girl who was ‘unaware everyone exited’ woke up ‘realizing she was very hot and had trouble breathing’, according to an arrest report citing CCTV footage.
The girl started ‘banging on a window’ and a parent who was walking by the parking lot in Oveido, Florida, alerted cops, states the document obtained by Law&Crime.
She was rescued and did not suffer any medical issues.
Ledbetter was arrested and booked into Seminole County Jail.
The high temperature there that day was 96 degrees Fahrenheit, according to AccuWeather data.
Surveillance video showed that Ledbetter ‘did not check the bus after arriving to the day care and letting the kids off’, according to the arrest report.
‘That’s their responsibility to make sure that all the children are off the bus before they lock it and shut it off,’ police Lt Adam Egert told ClickOrlando.
But Ledbetter wrote in a duty log that she had checked the vehicle.
The state Department of Children and Families launched an investigation into the incident on Tuesday.
Ledbetter has been charged with third-degree child neglect without causing great bodily harm, and neglect by willful or culpable negligence for her alleged failure to confirm the bus had no one left inside.
She bonded out with her bail set at $2,500, according to court records on Thursday. She is scheduled to appear in court on October 1.
‘Parents: put something in the back with your child,’ advised Egert. ‘Whether it’s a purse, some kind of personal item you’re going to need that forces you to go to the back of the car.’
The girl was rescued just weeks after a six-month-old baby died in a hot car after a neighbor allegedly forgot to drop him off to his father in Cordes Lakes, Arizona.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.
