School bus leaves 6-year-old girl 20 miles away from home

TAMPA, Florida (KTRK) -- A mother in Florida wants answers after her 6-year old daughter was mistakenly dropped off 20 miles away from her home.

"My heart just dropped, basically," mother Chenell Worlds said. "I thought I was gonna die when I heard my daughter was lost again."

The first grader rode the Lee Magnet Elementary School bus for the first time on Monday, and after school she somehow ended up in Tampa.

Worlds says two teenage girls spotted her daughter and called for help.

"They were asking her, 'Do you live here? Do you live here?'" Worlds said. "They walked her down one street. Then, she finally told them, 'I don't live here.' And that's when they called their mother and told their mother, there's a little girl, she doesn't know where she lives."

The school says an address mix-up was to blame.

But, then on Tuesday, the girl was boarded onto the wrong bus after school.

The bus driver recognized the problem and alerted the transportation department.

"It's unacceptable that this happened twice," said Tanya Arja of the Hills County Schools.

The district says they have addressed the situation and understand the mom's frustration.

"This is someone's child," said Arja. "They want to know that we are taking her safety seriously. We need to take that moment to call them and let them know we've resolved the issue."