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A Palm Beach County school bus driver was fired after officials say he left a teenager four miles from his home earlier this year.
Tony Mancuso, a 15-year-old student at Suncoast Community High School in Riviera Beach, fell asleep on his school bus heading home in March.
His stop is usually the last one on the route and when he woke up around 4pm, he told bus driver Gerald Marston, 69, what had happened.
“I’m sorry. I fell asleep and need to go home now,” Mancuso told the driver, according to The Palm Beach Post. Marston reportedly told the teen “I can’t go back. Sorry about that.” He then instructed him to get off the bus and call one of his parents to come and get him.
Marston left the teenager at a park and went on to continue his next route. About 15 minutes later, he spotted the teen and asked him if someone was coming to pick him up. Tony said his father was coming and Marston drove off.
The Independent emailed Marston for comment.
An investigation into the incident found that Marston never called his supervisor or the bus dispatchers to report the incident, the outlet reported. Footage from the bus showed the driver giving the teenager directions to exit the park and get back to his stop. The walk would’ve taken Mancuso an hour and a half.
Additionally, Marston did not do his end-of-route safety check, which he is required to do for students, personal property, or broken equipment. Had he done the check, he could’ve found Mancuso earlier, district officials said.
Marston’s supervisor, Clarinda Shabazz, told school investigators the driver had “more than enough time to return the student to his stop or to the Central Transportation Facility, which is located a mile away from the park. He instead lost all contact with Mancuso.
Marston told investigators he thought it was okay to leave the child.
“He’s 15. Where is the line? What if it was my daughter? She’s in middle school,” David Mancuso, the boy’s father, told the newspaper.
He questioned if the school district had a policy stating: “At this age we can do whatever the hell we want? You’re responsible for a child, whether they’re five years old or a teenager.”
The boy’s father said his wife called him to tell him about what had happened. Tony did not know where he was and his parents needed to track his phone to come get him. After locating the child, his father called the school’s principal, school police, the district transportation office and several school board members about the incident.
The school board unanimously approved Marston’s firing last month. The driver had also been involved in three crashes in 2020, 2021 and 2022 that officials called “preventable”. If he does not appeal his firing, he will be terminated effective October 11. Marston had been a bus driver since 2016. He is not facing criminal charges due to the incident.
