A six-year-old boy studying in the Gateway International School in Hanoi was found dead Tuesday after he was abandoned in the school bus for nine hours.

Le Hoang Long, a first grader, who lived in Cau Giay District, was put on the bus belonging to the school at 7 a.m. It was his second day coming to Gateway. Pham Du, Duong Tam reported on VNExpress, a local media.

At 4 p.m. the parents learned from the boy’s class teacher that he had not attended class that day.

“When we went to the school, we received evasive answers from the teacher,” said the boy’s father.

“When we tried to find our child, the school said he had overslept in the bus and had been admitted to E Hospital. When we reached the hospital, our child was already dead.”

The boy had been found unconscious in the bus by school staff at 4 p.m., when students were returning home for the day.

Tran Thi Hong Hanh, chairwoman of Gateway, said he was then taken to the hospital.

When the student was absent from class in the morning, his class teacher Nguyen Thi Thuy had informed the school administration of his absence, she said.

But since the teacher in charge of informing the parents was on leave that day, “mistakes happened,” she said.

“The unit hired to provide the bus service admitted the student was forgotten on the bus.”

Teachers from the school said that Long sat on the last row of the 16-seat car, which was carrying 13 students on Tuesday morning.

When the bus arrived at school, two other students who were on their first day to school were crying a lot, and Quy, an assistant traveling with the students on the bus, was busy helping them and did not check the number of students stepping down.

Quy and the bus driver, Phien, never checked the vehicle until they picked up the students from school in the afternoon.

Long was then found lying on the row right behind the driver’s seat.

According to VNExpress, The boy’s family has agreed to have an autopsy done, to decide the time and cause of death.The school has said it takes full responsibility and is checking security cameras to find out what happened. The Cau Giay District police have summoned school authorities for questioning.

Gateway has classes from grades 1 to 9 and three campuses, two in Hanoi and one in the nearby Hai Phong City.

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Read original post on VNExpress.

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