By MELISSA PEACOCK

LAPLACE – It was like every other school day. The bus picked up the kids at the bus stop at an intersection on East Maple Loop and the same lighthearted banter filled the bus as it rolled toward the bus stop at the end of the day.

But in a split second something changed. A LaPlace Elementary School student was hit in the stomach by a fellow student and was pushed to the ground.

“My son is six years old,” father Michael Smith said. “The boy hit him in the stomach, pushed him on the ground and started choking him until his mouth came open.”

That, the distraught father said, was when children on board called out to the bus driver to stop the bus. Still, the bus rolled along with its familiar bounce toward its destination.

“The boy started spitting in his face and mouth,” Smith said. “My son started gagging and threw up.”

The boys had been fighting over something that one of the two had found. One day, one boy had custody of the object and on another day, the other would take it back.

“Fights happen,” Smith said. “I was in fights all the time when I was growing up. But the fact that an adult was there and never attempted to stop the bus, never attempted to stop the fight, that is wrong.”

The first-grader’s nightmare did not stop with the fight or the humiliation of having vomited on the bus in front of other children. It grew worse, Smith alleged, when his 9-year-old daughter, also a passenger on the bus, was asked by the driver to clean up the mess.

“Neither one of them wants to ride the bus again,” Smith said. “But, with the (work) situation that I am in, they have to.”

Smith learned about the fight from his wife. She called him almost hysterical the day of the fight to tell him what had happened. He was unable to get much information from his little boy, who was still sickened by the events. Instead, he learned from his daughter and some neighborhood children what had happened.

“After he stopped the bus, he asked if he was OK,” Smith said. “The next morning, after I had time to calm down, I told the principal what happened.”

While Smith said some members of the school system were less than helpful about resolving the conflict, LES Principal Courtney Millet, pulled the bus driver off the bus and into a conference with the family.

“We talked about why he did not stop,” Smith said. “We explained that the big yellow vehicle is a safety vehicle. He can stop in the middle of I-10 and do it safely.”

Smith alleged the driver said during the meeting he did not stop the bus because he did not feel he had a place where he could stop safely. He also claimed he did not feel that he could clean the bodily fluids from the bus because he did not have the proper biohazard materials, according to Smith.

St. John the Baptist Parish School officials are remaining tight-lipped about what happened during the meetings with the bus driver and what transpired at a School Board hearing. They would not confirm or deny Smith’s allegations.

“I assure you, disciplinary actions were taken,” Superintendent Michael Coburn said. “When I got wind of what happened, I felt that I had to look into it to see what further could be done.”

However, Coburn said, the school system’s personnel policies prohibit him from revealing what actions were taken against the driver – even to the student’s family – as well as the identity of the bus driver.

“As far as I am concerned, a refusal to comment is admitting that there is something you do not want the public to know,” Smith said. “When I was about 18 I was in Search and Rescue. The only time they ever asked us to say, ‘No comment’ was when procedures had not been followed.”

Smith said the bus driver continues to carry local children to school and has not, as far as he knows, missed any work as result of the incident.

School Board officials would not release the identity of the bus deriver.