Five-year-old forced off school bus and abandoned at New Main, according to her parents

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A five-year-old child was forced off their school bus and left at New Main Apartments.

A mother and father stated their 5-year-old daughter and Vicksburg school student was made to leave her school bus Thursday afternoon at the wrong bus stop, leaving her stranded at New Main Apartments, where a shooting happened on Monday afternoon.

Detailing the incident, Dionne Allen, the 5-year-old girl’s mother, said she was at work on Thursday when her daughter’s daycare, Kiddie Kollege, called her, informing her that the child was missing from her after-school bus. Thankfully, a tenant in the neighborhood where the child had been mistakenly dropped off took notice of the young girl. This person then used an information tag on the girl’s backpack to contact the daycare.

The 5-year-old sat out there for an hour

“She said she had been sitting out there a while,” stated Allen, referring to the statement made by the tenant. “Maybe about an hour. It was a long time.”

The situation became even more complicated when the school dispatched its assistant principal to pick the child up. This happened while a teacher from the daycare was already en route to retrieve the child. The school district wouldn’t allow the child to leave with the daycare teacher. No one knew who the child should leave with. Given the school’s error and the unfamiliarity of the assistant principal to her daughter, Allen decided to let the daycare teacher take her child.

“I was very irate. I was very upset,” Dionne Allen admitted. Allen then shifted her attention to the woman, who doesn’t want to be named, who went to help her daughter and held her hand until a familiar face arrived, “I’m thankful for that individual because things could have taken a terrible turn.”

Daddy, I said your name

Kellen Williams, the father, voiced his frustration and pain over not being there for his daughter in her moment of need. “She stated, ‘Dad, I called you’,” Williams recalled, visibly choked up. “I said ‘What do you mean?’. She said ‘I was saying your name, dad, I was scared.”

Williams expressed that having children, you always tell them that you will be there when they need you. Williams was working in Oxford, some three hours away on Thursday afternoon when the incident occurred. When he got the call his daughter was left at New Main he left work immediately. “I couldn’t get here fast enough,” said Williams.

Friday morning, Allen stated she visited the Sherman Avenue School to talk about the situation with the assistant principal and lead teacher about the situation. She said she was then referred to the bus’s transportation department.

There is a video of the incident

At the transportation department, Allen stated she was met with more apologies but was able to review the video from the bus.

Allen said the bus footage clearly showed her child being ushered off the bus and the child’s discomfort was evident. “It was so clear she did not want to get off that bus,” Allen stated.

Allen further stated that the footage showed her daughter hesitated on the last step. However, the parents also said their daughter was a disciplined and polite child who would respect adults and the adults on the bus made her get off the bus.

The girl’s parents do not want an incident such as this to get “swept under the rug”.

“We shouldn’t have to wait until my child was reported missing or ‘we can’t find her’ or stuff like that for them to actually be concerned,” stated Allen. “What if this happens this evening?” Allen and Williams also expressed their displeasure that they had to do all the work and reach out to everyone in the school district. “No one has called us back or gotten back to us.”

The school district has not responded

Vicksburg Daily News reached out to the school district several times since Thursday afternoon and with several departments, but at the time of this report, the school district chose to not respond to the Vicksburg Daily News.

Just before publishing this report, the Vicksburg Daily News reached out to Dione Allen who said the school district had yet to contact them as promised.