A Melbourne mum has shared footage of the distressing moment her 12-year-old son was dragged along the road while on the way to school, after his bag got caught in bus doors.
The incident occured in Wheelers Hill, south-east Melbourne on March 16.
The CCTV footage released today by mum Grace, showed the moment her son’s bag became trapped, with the schoolboy lifting his knees to avoid scraping it on the asphalt.
“When the bus took off he knew that he couldn’t keep running at its side so he just had to lift his legs off the ground,” Grace told Today.
“And honestly, if he was a taller student, or a weaker student, there is no way he would be able to hang on to the side of a moving bus, at that speed, for that distance.”
Grace said the bus eventually came to a halt when another mum honked at the driver after she saw the boy hanging off the vehicle. The boy was reportedly dragged for about 350 metres.
Aside from bruising on his shoulder from the strap of his schoolbag, the boy was fortunately not seriously injured.
“We’re very, very thankful that he is physically unhurt,” Grace told 3AW in an earlier interview.
“I don’t know how it happened. He could have died… he could have clipped the side [of the] cars.”
She added that her son is now “traumatised” and no longer catches the bus to school alone.
“[He] is still seeing a psychologist, but he can’t travel on the bus alone anymore and he gets panic attacks when he sees a bus on the road,” she said.
Grace has called for safety improvements to ensure a similar incident does not occur.
In the interview with Today, she shared that the bus door only had one sensor in the middle and her son was caught under it “so it didn’t set off any alarms for the driver.”
“However, the door wasn’t fully closed, his arm was caught in it, you would think there would be another safety feature on the bus to alert the driver of that.”
“Ventura [the bus operator] are not being accountable, the responses I have received from them so far have been very dismissive and just very disappointing.
“We need our children to be safe. This should not have happened to [my son] or anybody else, it’s just horrible.”
Image: Instagram
