John Jefferson
Left: an All About Kids bus (WOFL). Right inset: Barbra Ledbetter (Seminole County Sheriff’s Office).
A day care bus driver in Oviedo, Florida, is accused of leaving a young girl inside the hot vehicle for over an hour and leading her now former employer to believe that she checked the bus when she hadn’t, when instead the child had to bang on a window to catch the attention of a passerby to get to safety.
One day after the Department of Children and Families opened an investigation about the Monday incident, the Oviedo Police Department said it went to All About Kidz and independently learned that 49-year-old Barbra Ledbetter left a sleeping 6-year-old girl in the back of one of the day care’s “very hot” buses for just over an hour, that the child experienced “trouble breathing” when she awoke, and that she started banging on a window to get out.
“Through DCF’s investigation and my own investigation, it was determined [the child] was left sleeping on a daycare bus, which was turned off and unattended, for a period of one hour and two minutes in the parking lot of All About Kidz,” the arrest report obtained by Law&Crime said, citing surveillance video and alleging that Ledbetter “did not check the bus after arriving to the day care and letting the kids off.”
Though the bus driver did not check the bus to make sure there were no children on it, she falsely claimed that she did in a day care log, cops say.
“Her job duty requires her to physically go to the back of the bus and visually check the seats, which she did not do,” authorities said. “She then signed a log stating she checked the bus.”
The child, described as “asleep in back” of the bus and “unaware everyone exited,” eventually woke up “realizing she was very hot and had trouble breathing,” documents said.
The report said that a parent, unclear whose, was walking by in the day care parking lot heard the girl “banging on a window” and noticed her inside the bus. Cops redacted the specifics, but it seems a relative “completed a written statement” and was “willing to press charges.”
The charge Ledbetter faces is third-degree child neglect without causing great bodily harm, a felony count for neglect by willful or culpable negligence, due to her alleged “failure or omission” to confirm that the bus was empty.
As of Thursday morning, court records do not show a defense attorney of record, but Ledbetter has posted a $2,500 bond to get out of the Seminole County Jail.
All About Kidz told local Fox affiliate WOFL that it has “cooperated fully” in the investigation and that the bus driver was fired.
Read the arrest report here.
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