By ELISSA GOOTMAN\New York TimesIt is any parent’s nightmare: The yellow school bus that so many parents rely on to ferry their children to and from school simply does not show up on time — not an hour late, not two hours late, but about five hours late for some.
According to the police, the driver, whom they identified as Joseph Gray, 53, said he had gotten lost. He was arrested on charges of acting in a manner that is injurious to a child under 17 years of age, the police said. But a spokesman for the Brooklyn district attorney’s office said on Wednesday that it would not prosecute the driver because the statute requires that “the suspect acted in a manner that is knowingly injurious to a child.”
But criminal or not, the ordeal had parents shaken, and mystified as to what could have possibly taken the driver so long. While school officials said the driver had arrived about an hour late to pick the children up (dismissal begins at 3:45 p.m.), many children who arrived home late live just minutes from the school.
A lawyer for Mr. Gray’s employer, Lonero Transit Inc., one of a number of companies that provides bus service to New York City public schoolchildren, said that he, too, was puzzled by the driver’s conduct, and that the driver would be fired.
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