A Forney daycare bus driver has been charged with child abandonment and endangerment after police say she left a 5-year-old girl locked inside a hot bus for nearly two hours on August 14. The child was picked up from Lewis Elementary during her first week of school and driven to Arka Montessori on Pinson Road, where she remained trapped inside the parked vehicle as outdoor temperatures climbed to 102 degrees.
Forney police confirmed the incident and identified the driver as 37-year-old Jessica Deneen Smith-Ward, according to The Dallas Express. An arrest warrant affidavit reported by CBS News Texas states that Smith-Ward picked up children from the school at 3:48 p.m. and initialed the daycare's attendance log indicating the girl had exited the bus, yet surveillance footage showed the child was not actually removed until 5:41 p.m. — a gap of one hour and 53 minutes.
The girl's mother, Tidankay Tejan, said the family searched the daycare campus after her older daughter realized her younger sister was not inside the building. Per the family's attorney, Michael Collier, the child was not noticed missing after the bus arrived, and it was the mother and daughter who eventually found her through a bus window after spotting her red bandana. The girl's father, Sorie Tejan, said the family later learned the child associates the daycare with the incident.
What the Child Told Investigators
In an August 19 forensic interview cited by the same CBS News report, the girl told investigators she fell asleep on the bus ride with her Peppa Pig backpack, then woke to find herself trapped and sweating in the heat, calling out for her mother. Collier said the child responded only after hearing her mother's voice outside the bus. She remained inside the locked vehicle, parked on daycare property, until she was pulled free.
The family says the girl was taken to a hospital and treated for dehydration; per CBS News, she received intravenous fluids at Baylor Scott & White Hospital in Forney. Sorie Tejan said the experience has been traumatic for the family, and the girl's mother said she hopes no other family goes through something similar. The family's pastor, Silvanos Chapman, said relatives are grateful the girl survived.
Charges and What Comes Next
Forney police say they have arrested one person in the case, and the police report has reportedly been heavily redacted because it involves a minor, according to the same Dallas Express report. Smith-Ward faces child abandonment and endangerment charges. Under Texas Penal Code Section 22.041, abandoning or endangering a child under 15 through criminal negligence or intentional acts is a felony, with penalties ranging from 180 days to two years in a state jail facility, or up to 20 years in prison if the conduct creates an imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury, according to FindLaw.
The family's attorney, Collier, argued that proper procedures should prevent a child from ever being left inside a vehicle in the first place. He said childcare providers transporting children are expected to account for every child in their care. Texas regulators have specific rules meant to catch exactly this kind of lapse: under Title 26, Section 746.5625 of the Texas Administrative Code, licensed child-care centers operating vehicles that seat eight or more people must install and use electronic child safety alarms requiring drivers to walk to the rear of the vehicle to confirm all children have exited before the alarm can be disabled, per Law.Cornell.Edu. Separately, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, under Chapter 42 of the Texas Human Resources Code, assigns high-risk violation weights to facilities that fail to perform required visual walk-throughs of transport vehicles.
A Recurring Danger Across Texas
The family says it is speaking publicly to warn other parents and push for greater safeguards. Their case follows a pattern Hoodline has tracked across the state this summer: two Eagle Pass daycare workers were charged after a 2-year-old was left inside a transport van for four hours in the heat, and a 5-year-old girl died of vehicular heatstroke in Garland during an extreme heat warning that pushed temperatures to 105 degrees.
Texas leads the nation in pediatric vehicular heatstroke deaths, with 149 recorded between 1990 and 2026, according to data compiled by Kids and Car Safety. A parked vehicle's interior temperature can climb 20 degrees in just 10 minutes and 40 degrees within an hour, and a child's body heats up three to five times faster than an adult's, according to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data. For the Tejan family, those statistics became a lived nightmare on an August afternoon that started as an ordinary school pickup.
