Story time: When I first got out of college, I took a summer job as a teaching intern. One of my duties was occasionally driving a bus. Sure, I tried to be friendly to all the students and keep them from picking on one another. But two things terrified me—so much that avoiding them took up about 90% of my mental bandwidth. The first was getting into an accident that might injure a student. The second was abandoning a student at the wrong place.

Years later, I’m a journalist. I don’t claim to be a school bus operations expert. But I can tell you that Colorado substitute bus driver Irving Johnson made one of the biggest mistakes possible.

A cold night and a major mix-up

This incident happened on a cold November night in 2024, when temperatures dropped to 19 degrees. I haven’t seen any official charges by the Castle Rock Police Department or a ruling yet, so the allegations against Johnson remain just that. Here’s what we know: Forty students got off the bus at the third of 12 stops on their route. It was about 5 p.m., and they were two miles from campus.

A 10-year-old named Caitlyn Zavaldi told a local NBC station that tensions were high with the substitute driver. “He wouldn’t let us leave the school until we stopped talking.” Maybe he was just trying to keep order. But what came next was far worse.

Johnson later said he was unfamiliar with the route and that the iPad used for navigation was malfunctioning. Caitlyn said, “We felt like when he was driving and missing our stops, like we were getting kidnapped.”

Then Irving found the third stop on the route. “He stopped like right here at this intersection, like about right here, and said, ‘Everybody get off my bus.’ Everybody was like stressing, like crying.”

She explained that she got off the bus ahead of schedule but forgot her jacket in the confusion. “Me and my little sister, we live like two miles away from here, so we had like no idea what to do.”

None of the students were injured. Caitlyn and her sister were picked up by a stranger who immediately called their mother. Their mother said, “I was absolutely petrified, and for a stranger to call me and tell me that she had my children in the car and they were crying and screaming, and bright red and frozen.”

School district and the driver respond

The Douglas County School District confirmed, “On the third stop on Monday afternoon, the bus stopped just short of the usual location, leading to some confusion. At that time, the remaining 40 students on the bus all exited, with many getting off at the wrong bus stop.”

Two days later, the driver made a public apology. “I would just like to apologize. I am sorry. I wish I had done better.”

The Castle Rock Police Department told parents it couldn’t release the bus’s security footage because an investigation was underway. In the past year, Irving has faced three misdemeanor child abuse charges.