Somerset police file criminal complaint against driver accused of leaving blind boy in van

SOMERSET — Police Monday filed a criminal complaint against the Fisher Bus driver who allegedly forgot to drop a legally blind 5-year-old off a daycare, leaving him alone in a student transportation van for about 40 minutes.

Police filed the criminal complaint against Susan Dupre, 63, of Fall River, for wanton or reckless behavior creating risk of serious bodily injury to a child, said Somerset Police Chief George McNeil.

Whether probable cause exists to formally charge Dupre in violation of the state law will be determined at a hearing of the clerk magistrate in Fall River District Court. No date had been set for the hearing as of Monday afternoon, according to the District Court clerk’s office.

A civil citation was issued against Dupre last week for failing to inspect the van after transporting students, according to McNeil.

Dupre was terminated from Fisher Bus due to the incident, he said. Fisher Bus did not respond to requests for comment.

According to McNeil, Dupre was supposed to pick the 5-year-old boy up from preschool and bring him to daycare on Monday. Dupre apparently forgot to drop the boy off.

She returned to the company’s parking lot and disembarked, leaving the student inside, McNeil said. The boy’s mother, Rana Lucich, learned her son was left on the van after the daycare facility called at about 3:45 p.m. alerting Lucich that her son hadn’t arrived that day.

Dupre allegedly told police that she didn’t see the boy because he was asleep and slouched down in his seat, McNeil said. A manager at Fisher Bus found the child inside the van at the company's Johnson Street lot about 40 minutes after the boy was left behind.

“Thank God himself that it was not June,” the boy’s mother wrote in a post on social media. “And that my son’s daycare is VERY attentive. If they had not been it would have been hours before it was noticed. And the outcome could have been very different.”

The incident was also reported to the Department of Transportation and the Registry of Motor Vehicles, Superintendent Jeffrey Schoonover said in a May 8 letter to parents.

Schoonover said there is no excuse for the “completely avoidable” misstep of leaving a child on a transportation van, and said Dupre’s firing was “appropriate.”

“This driver will not be transporting students for Fisher Bus, the Somerset Public Schools, or the Somerset Berkley Regional School District ever again,” said Schoonover.

Fisher Bus is reviewing procedures bus drivers must follow after completing trips and holding mandatory training for drivers this week, according to Schoonover.

Before the incident, the district began the process of installing buttons in the back of each student transportation vehicle. If a driver does not press the button within a limited period of time, a horn and alarm will sound, which Schoonover said forces the driver to visually inspect the vehicle before leaving.

The district aims to install one of the devices on each transportation vehicle before the school year ends.

Also in response to last week’s incident, van drivers in the Somerset and Somerset Berkley school districts are now required to buckle each seat belt on their vehicle at the end of the day, which “further verifies to the driver that the van is unoccupied,” said Schoonover.