Horrifying Bus Ordeal Stuns Brooklyn

Yellow school bus parked on pavement — Photo: Michael O'Keene / Shutterstock

Six nonverbal special education students sat on a Brooklyn school bus for more than four hours last December while the driver got lost and a staff member made no effort to call for help.

Story Snapshot

Six nonverbal students bound for P.S. 289 in Brooklyn arrived four and a half hours late, at 1:25 p.m. instead of 9:00 a.m.
Driver Eric Chery drove to two wrong schools before dispatch redirected him, according to investigators.
GPS records reportedly contradicted Chery’s claim that all children were picked up by 10:00 a.m.
One child was found on the bus floor in wet clothing after urinating on herself during the delay.
The driver and bus matron were placed on leave and barred from working with Department of Education students.

A Four-Hour Delay Uncovered by Investigators

The New York City Special Commissioner of Investigation found that six special education students were supposed to reach P.S. 289 between 8:20 and 9:00 a.m. on December 16. They did not arrive until 1:25 p.m. That is a delay of more than four hours for children who cannot speak up to ask for help. The investigation, reported in October 2026, laid out a timeline built from bus GPS data, a parent’s tracking devices, and staff interviews.

Investigators say driver Eric Chery became lost during the route. He drove to two different schools before dispatch stepped in and directed him to the correct building. That detour alone shows the route broke down early, long before anyone outside the bus realized something was wrong.

GPS Data Versus the Driver’s Account

Chery reportedly told investigators that all six students had been picked up by 10:00 a.m. Department of Education GPS data told a different story. It placed the bus outside one student’s home as late as 10:59 a.m., nearly an hour after he said every child was already on board.

A mother had placed location-tracking tags inside two of the children’s backpacks. Those tags showed the kids were still moving around Brooklyn near midday, not sitting in a classroom. Her independent tracking data lined up with the bus GPS and helped trigger the investigation that exposed the full scope of the delay.

Matron Admitted She Never Called for Help

Germina Thomas, the bus matron with nearly two decades of experience, told investigators she did not communicate with Chery during the morning shift. She also said she never contacted the school, the bus depot, or anyone else for assistance while the children sat trapped for hours. Her job was to monitor the students’ safety and well-being during the ride.

The human cost of that silence became clear when the bus finally arrived. One child had urinated on herself, removed her own diaper and leggings, and was found lying on the bus floor or seat in wet clothing. That detail shows what four hours of unmet basic care looked like for a nonverbal child who could not tell anyone she needed help.

Employees Barred, Officials Respond

Consolidated Bus Transit placed both Chery and Thomas on administrative leave after the incident. The company confirmed neither employee is currently permitted on its buses or allowed to interact with students. Investigators recommended problem codes meant to stop both workers from supervising Department of Education students or working for any Department of Education vendor going forward.

School officials reportedly contacted police when they could not locate the bus that morning, though public reporting does not detail a separate police finding or outcome tied to that contact. The case remains an administrative matter tied to the bus contractor and the Department of Education rather than a criminal proceeding, based on available reporting.

Part of a Larger Pattern of Delays

This incident did not happen in isolation. New York City’s Office of Pupil Transportation received more than 150,000 complaints in the 2023-24 school year, an increase of nearly 82% from just two years earlier. More than 16,000 of those complaints involved special education transportation, and over 14,000 involved no-show pickups.

City auditors have said the Department of Education lacks the systems to investigate why these failures keep happening or to hold bus companies accountable when they do. For families of nonverbal children who depend entirely on others to speak for them, that gap between oversight on paper and oversight in practice is exactly what left six kids unaccounted for on a Brooklyn street for most of a school day.

SCHOOL BUS SCARE: Six nonverbal students spent more than four hours on a school bus before arriving at their Brooklyn school, according to a city investigation.#News12 #Brooklyn #SchoolBusScare https://t.co/h6kx4P5vy7

— News12BK (@News12BK) October 17, 2026

The findings raise a question many parents across the city have already been asking for years: who is actually watching when a bus carrying the most vulnerable students goes off course, and why does it so often take a parent’s own vigilance, rather than the system built to protect their child, to notice something is wrong.