A five-year-old girl (left) trapped in a hot school van (right) escaped by using the hard bottoms of her shoes to break a window (Pictures: PIX11)
A five-year-old girl left sleeping by a driver inside a hot school van managed to save her own life.
The private van driver picked up the girl from her home in New York City’s Queens borough around 7am on Thursday to take her to Al-Ihsan Academy, her father, Mahtabul Bhuiyan, told WABC.
But instead of checking the vehicle at the school for any remaining students on board, the driver allegedly drove 10 minutes away to Richmond Hill for his doctor’s appointment.
The kindergartner woke up trapped in the vehicle and was smart enough to use her shoes with hard bottoms to kick out one of the windows.
She then went up to a stranger walking by the van and asked to call her dad. The Good Samaritan called 911 and then Bhuiyan.
‘It was like 82 degrees (Fahrenheit) yesterday outside. And the minivan was fully sealed windows. From 7(am) to 10.30(am),’ Bhuiyan told PIX11 on Friday.
‘So she could have died. She could have died.’
Bhuiyan rushed to the van and said the driver eventually showed up and claimed that he had no clue the girl was inside and was running errands.
The girl’s father, Mahtabul Bhuiyan, said she was in the hot vehicle for three hours (Picture: PIX11)
The driver, identified as Faruk by PIX11, said he did not know the girl was in the back seat ‘because she was sleeping’.
‘Yeah, it was mistake. Mistake. Inshallah. I will do it, inshallah,’ the driver told the TV station, dropping the Arabic-language expression meaning ‘if God wills’.
‘Sometimes me forget, like sometimes. You understand?’
On top of that, Bhuiyan said the school did not reach out to report that his daughter did not show up to class, and that his wife was put on hold on the phone for 15 minutes.
A five-year-old girl kicked out the window of a van after she was trapped inside for three hours in Queens on Thursday morning (Picture: PIX11)
‘Three hours stuck in that minivan. And she’s not unconscious. I’m really proud of her because she was really brave,’ the dad said.
‘I can’t imagine how she handled this situation.’
Al-Ihsan Academy told PIX11 that the ‘unfortunate incident deeply saddens us’.
‘The driver has been suspended,’ stated the private Muslim school in South Ozone Park. ‘We met with the parents and will continue to offer support to them.’
The driver of the private van had picked the girl up to take her to Al-Ihsan Academy (Picture: PIX11)
Bhuiyan said that his daughter has been left traumatized.
‘She’s totally exhausted. Not sleeping,’ he said. ‘She’s not having any food.’
He intends to hire a lawyer.
The girl escaped just weeks after a Florida daycare driver allegedly left a six-year-old girl sleeping in a hot bus. The girl woke up just over an hour later and started banging on a widow, catching the attention of a parent walking by and also survived the scary ordeal.
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