WASHINGTON - A young boy was found crying on his school bus not at his school, but at the bus terminal where he was discovered alone and scared.

Instead of being dropped off at school Tuesday morning, five-year-old Tyrone Coleman ended up at a bus terminal. He was left alone and was scared and now a bus driver, an attendant and a monitor have been fired.

Coleman's second day of kindergarten at Prospect Learning Center in Northeast D.C. was a day the young boy, his grandmother and mother won't forget.

"It was like my heart just dropped down to my feet," said Harolyn Coleman, Tyrone's mother.

His mother says Tyrone, who has a learning disability, was supposed to be dropped off at school at 7:30 a.m. Instead, he ended up alone on his bus in a terminal on New York Avenue.

"Tears came to my eyes. It [just really shook me up]. I mean, no one [wants to] see their five-year-old son left abandoned on a bus," she said.

According to transportation administrator David Gilmore, the bus driver and an on-board attendant were supposed to walk the bus after dropping off the children at school and do the same after reaching the terminal. Gilmore says there's even a bus monitor at the terminal who must check each bus.

He says those three employees simply did not do their jobs and have been fired. Gilmore also says another driver eventually saw Tyrone and made sure he was taken back to school. Gilmore suspects the child had been alone for about 15 minutes.

His mother thinks it was more like 45 to 60 minutes. Tyrone told his mother he was scared and crying when someone came to help. "I was really shook up -- scared," she said.

Family members and transportation officials suspect that the driver and the attendant didn't see Tyrone because he probably fell asleep on his seat.

But the head of transportation says a system is in place regardless of where a child is located to prevent this kind of mistake.

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