Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 15, 1992 TAG: 9203150174
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RON BROWN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"I want to get a meeting with the School Board, the teacher and Frank Tota," Annette Gibson said. "There was no excuse for what happened."
Gibson said she'll request the meeting Monday morning.
"I want to get to the bottom of where the mistake was made and why it was made," she said.
Scottie, 5, was found lying beneath an alley-side lean-to Friday night, about 32 hours after he disappeared. He was last seen after he got off the school bus near Maiden Lane and Wasena Avenue Southwest, several blocks from his home.
He got lost and sought shelter under a piece of plywood leaning up against a garage because he was afraid of a man who was following schoolchildren in the Raleigh Court area. School officials had told children about the so-called "stalker" at an assembly earlier in the day, Gibson said.
Gibson said she sent a note to Scottie's teacher asking that he not be put on the bus anymore.
Scottie used to ride the bus when his stepbrother, Shannon Whittaker, could meet him at the bus stop. But Shannon left town last week to live with his father, and new arrangements had to be made.
Scottie's stepsister, Chasity Whittaker, a student at nearby Woodrow Wilson Middle School, had planned to meet him at his school Thursday to walk him to his baby sitter's house on Cambridge Avenue. But she was held up at her school and couldn't meet him.
Ginny Taylor, 11, a fourth-grader at Scottie's school and the stepsister of Scottie's baby sitter, said she was asked to walk back to the school to find him after he didn't show up at the sitter's house.
Ginny said that someone at the school told her that Scottie had been put on the bus because no one had come to get him.
"My teacher put me on the bus," Scottie said in an interview Saturday morning.
However, Assistant School Superintendent Richard Kelley said Scottie's teacher did not have bus duty Thursday and could not have been the one who placed the child on the bus.
Kelley said the teacher dismissed Scottie with the children who walk home; they leave the school grounds before buses start rolling. Kelley believes that Scottie could have come out of the building and been unable to find anyone to walk him to the sitter's house.
Scottie could then have come back onto the school property, where the teacher with bus duty put him on the bus.
Kelley acknowledged that the school had received the note from Gibson requesting that Scottie be allowed to walk to the baby sitter's.
"The teacher with bus duty may not have known about that arrangement and put him on the bus," Kelley said.
Later this week, school officials plan to make recommendations for parents on how to avoid such problems in the future.
Those recommendations include that children be given written instructions to carry and that schools be given the names of persons who will meet kindergarteners at schools or at bus stops.
by CNB