A 7-year-old girl from Lovell went missing for more than six hours Wednesday while riding with a transport driver hired by the school district, her mother said Monday.
The girl was eventually delivered to school unharmed, but the mother, Katie Joy, is still seeking answers.
The driver, from a Lewiston-based transportation company, was supposed to bring the student, who has special needs, to Pineview Learning Center in Monmouth for an out-of-district placement, which is common in Maine when students need specialized care.
When the driver and the student did not arrive on time, however, officials with Regional School Unit 72 in Fryeburg could not locate them, Joy said.
“They had no ability to find the children, they had no ability to contact the driver,” Joy said. “I can track my Amazon package door to door and know exactly where it is. How can you lose a child for six hours?”
The mystery was expected to be a main topic of discussion at Monday’s special meeting at Molly Ockett School. The agenda calls for an executive session so the board can discuss “confidential information.”
Superintendent Jay Robinson could not be reached Monday afternoon.
“When any student cannot be located, regardless of the amount of time or circumstances, it is alarming,” he told WMTW-TV in Portland. “Given the challenges with communication around the events of last week’s incident, we will no longer be contracting for transportation services from First Alt.
“This was not a determination that was made as a result of any wrongdoing on the driver or company’s part, but a response to the challenges with communication brought about as we worked to navigate the issues last week in real time. Our hope is to take steps to assure that no students are in a similar situation again.”
First Alt, the transportation company, could not be reached for comment Monday.
On Wednesday, Joy said, her daughter’s regular transport driver called out sick and a replacement driver was sent. The replacement driver, who did not speak English, gave the mother a thumbs-up as he left with her child.
When Joy was taking her two other children to school later that morning, she found the driver and her daughter on the side of the road waiting for the driver’s phone and GPS to reboot.
Joy emailed school officials to notify them of the problem the driver was having, and to ask the school to let her know when her child arrived in Monmouth.
After the school called Joy back to say her child had not arrived, they reached someone at the transportation company, who said the driver and the student were only 20 minutes away from the Monmouth school.
A short time later, when her daughter still hadn’t arrived at the school, Joy called RSU 72 to say they had an emergency. Worried that the school district couldn’t help, she called police.
“They were struggling to get information from the transportation company and I made the decision to call 911,” Joy said.
“The police were great,” she added. “They prepared an Amber Alert and I described the purple unicorn dress and matching tights that she was wearing.”
Joy was later told that the driver of another transport van had located the vehicle her daughter was in, though she wonders how this was possible since she says the company told her the phone in the vehicle was not working.
Despite being located, her daughter did not arrive at school for another hour and a half.
“When she arrived, she was upset and she was covering her ears,” Joy said. “She was nonverbal at the time. She is usually a very verbal child.”
The girl was checked by school nursing staff, Joy said, who found no trauma concerns. She seemed better Monday and the mother had RSU 72 begin providing transportation for her once again.
This story was originally published by the Maine Trust for Local News. Steve Sherlock can be reached at [email protected].
