The Associated Press

COLUMBUS - A school bus driver and an aide who left a 10-year-old disabled boy alone on a parked bus for four hours may be fired.

"We're recommending termination" for both employees, Lori Carter-Evans, the district's director of transportation services, said Monday.

Driver Harold Baird, 64, an 11-year employee, and aide Dorothy Martin, 59, a 12-year employee, "are both very regretful," Ms. Carter-Evans said.

But she said the pair "need a job where their sloppiness doesn't matter."

Mr. Baird and Ms. Martin apparently did not check the bus Monday morning before locking it and leaving it in a bus compound about six miles from the school. The driver found Immanuel Hodge, who has Down syndrome, asleep on a seat when he returned to the bus around 1 p.m.

"When the driver went back out to do a walk-through for the afternoon, he found the child asleep," Columbus schools spokesman Mike Fulwider said.

Immanuel was given lunch and driven home by Tamu Gibbs, the principal at his school, Georgian Heights Alternative Elementary.

Immanuel's grandmother, Shirley Adams, said Monday night the abandonment of the boy was a betrayal of trust.

"If I had gone shopping and left him in a car seat, where would I be right now? I'd be all over the news and in trouble with the law," said Ms. Adams, the boy's legal guardian. "That's exactly what I want for Columbus Public Schools."

She said Immanuel cannot speak, and dwelled on what might have happened if he had gotten out of the bus, unable to communicate with anyone.