Mom furious after school bus mixup means daughter missing for more than an hour

A parent from Mineville on Nova Scotia's Eastern Shore is upset after her 10-year-old daughter ended up on the wrong school bus and she couldn't get any answers on the girl's whereabouts for an hour and half.

When school ended Thursday, Lisa Hiscott's daughter and a friend got onto the wrong bus at École des Beaux-Marais in Porters Lake.

Hiscott's eight-year-old twins did make it home at 2:35 p.m. and told their mom their older sister wasn't on board. Hiscott said when she contacted the school they told her to call Stock Transportation, the company that runs school buses.

But she said they were no help.

"By 4 o'clock, Stock still had not returned any of my phone calls and they weren't releasing any information to the school," said Hiscott. "We didn't know what bus she got on, if she was still on a bus, who the bus driver was or where she was."

Hiscott made her way to the school but no one appeared to know where the two students were.

"That was very unsettling, I was actually sick to my stomach," said Hiscott.

Hiscott was panicked and frustrated. She said she put out another call to Stock Transportation and left a message telling them she would call police to help look for her daughter.

Five minutes later, at 4:05 p.m., a bus pulled into the schoolyard with the two girls on board. Hiscott said the bus driver had become lost and had been in touch with dispatch the whole time to find his way back to school.

"He was a substitute driver and didn't know the area but there was really no need for the lack of communication."

Hiscott said Stock Transportation's general manager called her Friday morning to apologize for the incident.

A spokesperson for the company confirmed Friday the general manager had apologized. Kate Walden said there was "a breakdown in communication on our part."