QUEENS, N.Y. (PIX11) — Queens resident Mahtabul Bhuiyan is still fuming over what happened to his 5-year-old daughter Thursday morning.
The school van driver responsible for taking her to her private school didn’t check all the seats before he got out and left the little girl inside, sleeping in the back seat.
“It was like 82 degrees yesterday outside. And the minivan was fully sealed windows. From 7 [a.m.] to 10:30 [a.m.]. So she could have died. She could have died,” Bhuiyan said.
Bhuiyan said school officials at the private Al-Ihsan Academy in South Ozone Park later told him the driver thought he successfully dropped off all of the students before he drove and parked 10 minutes away in Richmond Hill to go to a doctor’s appointment.
But the kindergarten student – trapped in a locked, hot van – had the presence of mind to use her hard-bottom shoes to break one of the van’s windows, and then give her father’s phone number to a complete stranger who just happened to be walking by the van.