A 5-year-old was left stranded on a California mountain road miles from home after he boarded the wrong bus.
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Hendrix Camden was left standing 3 miles from his Amador County home when returning from kindergarten. His mom immediately feared for his safety when he didn’t come out of the school bus like normal.
On October 9, the young special needs boy boarded the school bus like normal after school at Amador County Unified School District had ended. However, he accidentally boarded the wrong one, per CBS News Sacramento.
His mother, Twilight, spoke to the outlet. “Yesterday, his normal bus driver showed up and we made eye contact, and he goes, ‘Hendrix isn’t on my bus today,” she recounted. A terrifying thing to hear.
Thankfully, another kid on the bus told Twilight that they saw Camden ride “the other bus.”
Twilight was able to “get in contact” with the other bus driver, but when she travelled to the bus, Camden was not in sight. It was only then that she received a call from an unknown number.
Camden Safely Returned To Mother After Kind Workers Kept Him Safe
Twilight had received a call from a Kamps Tree Services employee who reassured her that he had her son. It’s unknown exactly how the worker got hold of her phone number.
At some point, Camden had gotten off the bus and walked a quarter mile down winding mountain roads. There, he bumped into the workers.
The outlet spoke to the men who kept Camden safe while his mother returned to him. “He just wasn’t sure where he was at, and I tried to make him comfortable,” one said. They offered Camden a water bottle and a cookie until his mother came.
Now that he’s safe, Twilight wants accountability. “Protocol is for a kindergartner to be released to an adult or a parent, and if there’s not anybody there, you don’t have a signal. You keep driving to the next stop and you call them,” she said. “It just wasn’t handled correctly.”
“All I want is for the schools to know what’s going on, transportation, to know what’s going on, and something to get figured out right there.”