Driver, monitor fired for leaving girl

NORTH PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) - A bus driver and bus monitor involved in a December incident where a 5-year-old girl was dropped off in North Providence with no guardian present have been fire, a manager of Northeast Bus Company confirmed Tuesday morning.

Just Monday night, North Providence's school committee unanimously recommended at an emergency meeting that the driver and monitor be fired. The girl's parents had written a letter to the committee expressing their outrage at the danger in which their daughter had been left. A passerby found the girl on Smithfield Road the Friday before Christmas -- cold, frightened, and waiting for her grandmother to show up.

The drop-off was against the school department's policy, too: kindergarteners are not supposed to be let off buses if there is no parent or guardian waiting for them, and must be driven back to the school.

Instead, "nothing was done, everything was pushed under the rug," Marie Mello, a friend of the girl's family, said Monday night. She was part of a contingent that rebuked school superintendent Donna Ottaviano at the meeting. Ottaviano, in turn, denied ignoring the incident -- as it had been under investigation.

School committee members also said they couldn't believe this had happened.

"I don't even have the words to describe it. If that were ever my child, five years old, on the street, there would be a war in North Providence," said committee member Stephen Palmieri.