Madison Heights 5-year-old left on bus for 8 hours

MADISON HEIGHTS, Mich. (WJBK) - A Madison Heights 5-year-old girl fell asleep on the bus to school this week and was left by the driver for eight hours.

The parents of Aydrian Rodgers say the unthinkable happened to their daughter. When she fell asleep, the bus driver left her on the bus. Her mom, Tonya Flowers, said the bus driver didn't do her check and left their daughter on the bus.

Flowers says she had a conversation via a school app with her daughter's teacher the day of the incident. That conversation led the teacher to give Aydrian an excused absence because she thought she was at a funeral.

But the parents say two days later when the teacher realized Aydrian's brother had been in school she questioned Aydrian and that's when the child revealed for the first time that she had been left on the school bus.

The teacher immediately reported the incident to school officials

"I was shaking I was upset I was just trying not to fly off the deep end," Flowers said.

The parents say they are upset that the bus driver never reported the incident and that school officials expected a family member, who is a district employee, to tell them about the incident.

"I have a relative in the district and they put all the responsibility on him to tell us instead of being a leader and the superintendent making that call to let us know," Warren Rodgers, the girl's father, said.

School officials say once they learned about the incident they took appropriate action and fired the driver.

"That bus driver was terminated immediately. We found out that that situation took place ajd we've instilled additional protocol make sure that never happens again. Miss Flowers said she agreed and everything was resolved. That was five days ago and now we're bringing it up on television," Superintendent Randy Speck said.

Flowers says the district dropped the ball and she wants an apology and hopes no other parent has to experience this

School officials say they have apologized and are prepared to say so again

"We can do this on television we are sorry that this situation took place with her child or any situation," Speck said.