A 4-year-old Orange, Texas boy was found alone and crying on a West Orange-Cove CISD school bus Thursday morning, more than three hours after his mother watched him climb aboard for what should have been a routine ride to class. Alexus Lastrapes says the bus barn did not call her until around 9:15 a.m. to tell her that her son, Preston Turner-King, had been found by himself on the bus. Child Protective Services is now investigating the incident.
Lastrapes told 12News she watched Preston board his assigned bus around 6 a.m. Thursday and that he had been seated toward the front. District staff located the child shortly after he was left unattended, according to a statement from West Orange-Cove CISD, and a campus registered nurse examined him immediately and determined he appeared to have no injuries or medical distress. Lastrapes said she saw her son again after the school day ended, and that he came home frightened, repeatedly talking about being left on the bus.
A Second Transportation Scare in Two Weeks
This was not the first transportation problem Lastrapes says her family has faced this month. About two weeks earlier, on Oct. 15, she reported that her 6-year-old son, who has autism, was left at West Orange Elementary School instead of being picked up and taken home as scheduled. Lastrapes said she did not report that earlier incident to the district when it happened, but she contacted district administrators following Thursday's incident involving Preston.
Lastrapes has three children enrolled in West Orange-Cove CISD — one at North Early Learning Center and two at West Orange Elementary School. She reported Thursday's bus incident to Child Protective Services herself and said she is considering pressing charges. She wants the district to take accountability for what happened and hopes it makes changes to prevent a similar incident from happening to another family.
District Says It Has Taken Personnel Action
West Orange-Cove CISD acknowledged the bus incident in a statement released Friday, October 30, 2026, saying it began reviewing the circumstances as soon as it learned of what happened. The district said it has taken appropriate personnel actions, though it did not detail what those actions were. It also said it is reinforcing transportation safety procedures to ensure every student is accounted for while entering and exiting buses, adding that student safety and well-being remain its highest priority.
The district maintains a transportation page outlining its bus services, though it does not publicly detail child-check procedures. Similar incidents elsewhere in Texas have prompted districts to spell out exactly what went wrong and what they changed. After a 4-year-old girl was found alone on a Crowley ISD bus for about six hours, according to NBC DFW, the district fired the 53-year-old driver and, alongside Durham School Services, called it a serious breakdown in established safety procedures, launching a review of training and child-check compliance.
Other Texas Districts Have Faced Similar Failures
Connally ISD placed a bus driver and an aide on administrative leave after a student was left unattended on a bus for an entire school day, according to KXXV. That district said it was working with Texas Rural Student Transportation to investigate the failure and was self-reporting the incident to oversight agencies for further review and audits. Texas Rural Student Transportation said its protocols require drivers to physically inspect their buses at the conclusion of every route.
A separate case this past summer involved a daycare rather than a school district: a Forney daycare worker was charged with child endangerment after police said she left a 5-year-old locked inside a bus for nearly two hours on a 102-degree day, according to CBS News Texas. That daycare, Arka Montessori, has since implemented a system that cross-references bus and classroom attendance logs to catch similar lapses before a child is left behind.
It remains unclear what specific personnel actions West Orange-Cove CISD has taken, or what the Child Protective Services investigation will find. For now, Lastrapes says she just wants her children — and every student on a district bus — to come home safely.
