Malden Mom Claims 4-Year-Old Was Left On School Bus

MALDEN (CBS) - A mother is upset and angry after police showed up on her doorstep with her four-year-old daughter. She thought her little girl was at school, but instead the child was out on the streets on her own.

It isn't clear who allowed the girl to walk off on her own.

"I don't feel that anyone should have to go through this," said Christie Dalton.

Dalton is outraged. She says her daughter, Angelie, was accidentally left on a Malden school bus by a driver who never dropped her off at school.

Christie said the girl woke up in the school bus lot and walked several hundred yards down busy Eastern Avenue before a Good Samaritan picked her up.

"I just want to get my story out," says Dalton. "I just don't want no one else to go through this, because she could have been killed. She could have been kidnapped."

The bus driver claims she did drop the girl off at the school.

A police report says the girl told officers she got off at the school but wanted to go for a walk.

The school superintendent is trying to sort it all out.

"The girl may have said she got off at school and walked," said Dr. David DeRuosi, the Malden Schools Superintendent. "But then what's coming back from the family is a little different, and that's where I'm trying to figure it all out."

School surveillance video doesn't show the girl coming in to the school.

"It just hurts that this is happening and they're still having the bus driver on the bus," said Dalton.

The president of the bus company told WBZ-TV that each of the buses is equipped with a piece of a equipment that requires a driver to go to the back of the bus and activate a switch before he can turn off the bus. That's designed to prevent kids from being left on board.