A 5-year-old boy was confined to the van of a childcare center for nearly seven hours due to his teacher’s carelessness.
The boy was locked in the car from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Feb. 22 near a lot beside the center, which the child attends on Jeju.
The teacher and bus driver at the childcare center closed the door of the school bus without carefully checking the number of students and the teacher did not call to ask his parents whether the child would be coming to the center or not.
The director of the center said, “The teacher brought the child from the van at 10:30 a.m. after calling roll and found out he was missing,” but when asked to view CCTV, reversed his statement to “the driver discovered him in the afternoon.”
The mother of the child said “It is heartbreaking thinking that my child had no sip of water on a freezing and rainy day, he wet himself because he was trembled with fear” in an interview with the Yonhap news agency.
“The center reported my husband to police when he went to complain about the incident and they finally admitted and apologized for the mistake after we reported them to a related institution,” she added.
By Park Han-na
(hnpark@heraldcorp.com)
