It’s a video that has parents sick to their stomach with worry.
A Baltimore County School bus zipping down a narrow road, with special needs children inside.
The video was shot Wednesday on Overton Ave in Overlea.
Rhys Landers is a student at the Shafer Center School for Autism.
Even though the Shafer Center isn’t a public school, He still takes a public school bus.
He is one of the students that take the bus seen in the video, and his father Josh Landers said his heart dropped when he saw it.
“My hands started shaking I was fearful, scared, I was angry,” Landers said. “I was everything kind of balled all into one.”
Landers said the man who shot the video told him that he had seen the bus going that speed down the road several times this year.
On September 20th Rhys came off the bus with a mark on his neck, dad didn’t think of much of it at the time but did take pictures.
“He said the harness hurt him because the bus was driving like a rocket ship,” Landers said. “I didn’t think a whole lot of it because of the nature of my son’s autism. However, seeing that mark and then watching the tremendous disregard for safety where that exact bus was driving down the street yesterday in a neighborhood not too far from here, it just made my heart drop and pieces started to come together.”
Landers reached out to a list of politicians and school officials when he saw the video, and he wants to see the driver fired.
“I’ve made a request to BCPS the GPS tracking information for the bus and speed logs from September 20th and then also from yesterday where the video was shown of the bus driver driving down the street at excessive speed,” said Landers.
Kevin Leary is a former Maryland Transportation Authority Police Officer.
He now specializes in car insurance fraud investigations as a private investigator.
“As a former police officer I can tell you that bus is way over 25 miles an hour,” Leary said. “That’s an awfully narrow road to be going that fast on a bus.”
The Communications Specialist for Baltimore County Schools released this statement on the video.
“The BCPS Office of Transportation is in the process of investigating and appreciates it being brought to their attention. The mission of the BCPS Office of Transportation is to provide safe and efficient school transportation services in an environment that fosters positive social interaction and allows students to be successful learners."
As such, drivers are expected to abide by all traffic laws.
The bus in question transports students to non-public school locations in the county in the afternoon.”
Landers said there has been a substitute driver for the past two days.
