"I started panicking": Lynn mom demands answers after son's school bus arrived home 2 hours late
LYNN - As if the first day of school for 12-year-old Rory wasn't stressful enough. "He's usually home at 2:45 and they say give 10 minutes leeway," his mother Shannon said.
But for Shannon, 10 minutes turned into two hours when Rory's bus wasn't showing up at the end of the school day. "After a second phone call to the bus company with no one answering, I started panicking," she said.
Her seventh grader has autism and wasn't reaching out to her on his own. There was no answer not just from the bus company, but the superintendent and transportation departments, and the principal was in the dark as well.
Shannon says she knows Lynn is a congested city to get around. "It takes a long time to get from one side of Lynn to another," she said. "But the fact is there was no communication to anyone and after two hours I was completely paranoid."
Turns out Rory told his mother the bus was full, and he had to wait for another one. That driver was apparently confused. "There were children on the bus, the bus driver was going by homes, stopping at homes where there were no children," Shannon said.
WBZ-TV also got no answers from the bus company or any school or city officials. Though Rory finally made it home, his mother said he didn't want to get back on the bus the next day.
She's now begging for a better communication plan, so no other parent goes through her panic. "It was the most uncontrollable feeling," Shannon said. "I felt completely powerless."