Student Hospitalized after School Bus Mix Up

Note: I want you to listen carefully to callousness in Louis Svehla’s voice. He is the spokesperson for the school district. His comments are found at the 2:34 mark in the video.

AUGUSTA, Ga.---A Hephzibah High School freshman was let out of her school bus at the wrong place. The bus driver was allegedly new and unfamiliar with the route. The student says her protests were ignored. She had to walk a mile home in hot weather and ended up delirious and in the hospital.

"I didn't want that to happen to me," said 14-year-old Yasmine Burch. "I never thought it would."

Home video shows a delirious Yasmine Burch as she is carted off to the hospital. A school bus dropped her off and left her to walk home. She walked at least one mile down the road, around the bend, and up the hill in 100 degree temperatures.

"I was getting dizzy, and the more dizzy I got the more paranoid I felt," said Yasmine. "I kept looking back, but I guess my body couldn't take it."
She eventually collapsed of dehydration.

"She couldn't move," said Yasmine's ten-year-old sister, who found her. "She started foaming at the mouth. I felt like the bus driver should be fired."

Yasmine's book bag and the heat delivered a one-two punch.

"I'm used to being the big sister," said Yasmine. "I didn't want to let my little sister see me like that."

"How do you take it out of my ten-year-old child's head?" asked Pearl Holmes. "To find her best friend and my only two kids to be traumatized like that."

"My kids have been going to school from this house for six years," said Pearl. "There is no excuse."

The Richmond County school system blames a new bus driver who was unfamiliar with the routes.

"We made sure we took care of it the very next day," said spokesperson Louis Svehla.

"OK. We're going to fix the problem when we have Blue Cross Blue Shield send them the bill and the ambulance bill that I didn't ask for," said Pearl. "They didn't fix the problem when my family was up until 3 o'clock in the morning because none of us could go to sleep. Nobody understands how traumatic that was to her."

"I guess the system is sorry," said Svehla. "I mean it was an incident that happened. We hope it doesn't happen."

What about the medical bills?

"We'll send it down to our insurance company and let the insurance company take care of that," said Svehla.