First at Five, September 4, 2008

RICHMOND COUNTY, Ga.---A nine-year-old student is left on his school bus in Augusta, perhaps for hours. Now it's up to those in charge to figure out why it happened.

Tuesday morning, the driver dropped her bus load of kids at Glenn Hills Elementary, but school officials say this third-grade student was sleeping in the back.

The driver took the bus home, as she was supposed to. The child woke up and didn't know where he was, so he got off and wandered around the neighborhood.

Someone found him and took him to the school.

"This is something that we definitely don't like. It's a safety issue, it's an accountability issue. Our students and our parents need to know that their children need to know that they're going to be safe on our buses," said Louis Svehla, Richmond County School public information director.

There is a policy that drivers walk to the back of the bus before they get off, to make sure no kids or items are left. Now the school system is figuring out whether this driver did that.

All new buses bought since last year have a device to prevent this type of incident from happening. A buzzer goes off when the bus shuts down and the driver has to physically walk to the back to shut it off.

This bus driver is still driving her route, but that could change when the investigation is complete. The school system hopes to complete it by early next week.

The last time something like this happened in Richmond County was in 2004.