The Boston officials demand answers after a fatal school bus crash

Boston's school officers said on Thursday that they “offered a complete bookkeeping” after a school bus driver had hit and killed a kindergarten teacher last month.

Lens Arthur Joseph, a student at the Up Academy Dorchester, was killed from a bus in Boston Public School on April 28. The driver Jean Charles has been employed by District Bus Contractor Transdev since May 2023.

The district prosecutor's office of Suffolk and the police in Boston examine death.

“We mourn the death of Lens Joseph and mourn with his family at this terrible time,” said a spokesman for the school district in a two-sided fact sheet, which was confirmed by some details of the tragic incident that was previously reported by the Boston Globe-which Charles drove with an expired school bus certificate.

According to a police report in Boston received by WBur, the incident occurred at 2:43 p.m. in the 107 Washington Street in Hyde Park. The Globe reports that the collision had hit two parked cars in Mattapan shortly after Charles. According to reports, he tried to flee after beating the child, but was blocked by another driver, reported The Globe and added that Charles was new on the route and initially missed a curve.

A spokeswoman for the district refused to confirm or address one of these details on Thursday.

The report submitted after the crash, which indicates that Charles is neither suspected of drug nor alcohol consumption, and he is also not suspected of having used his telephone or a handheld device.

He was immediately closed by Transdev and resigned before a planned hearing on Wednesday how the information shared by the district emerges.

In the meantime, the Boston City officials demanded more transparency for the investigation on Thursday.

“We have to fully examine what happened and make sure that this will never happen again for a child in the city,” Boston, Erin Murphy, told Wbur on Thursday. “It's just an unnecessary tragedy.”

Murphy said the fact that the driver had driven in the supervision and accountability in our system with an expired certificate point to “alarming failures.

“Do we need real time -license monitoring?” she said.

Both Murphy and the City Councilor Ed Flynn have called for a review of the school bus driver of the district to hire and monitor guidelines.

“This disturbing development justifies an immediate review of the certification and security documents of each BPS bus driver,” said Flynn in a statement.

A spokesman for the Suffolk County public prosecutor did not make any additional comment on Thursday.

In his statement on Thursday, district officials said that Transdev was responsible for the hiring and training of bus drivers and is intended to ensure that the drivers are up to date with the necessary certification. The explanation added that Transdev only informed the district of Charles' dilapidated school bus certification after the crash.

Officials with Transdev, a company based in France, which works in several countries and US states, refused to make additional comments that have already divided the information that the Boston Public School has already shared. The company has been operating the city's public school buses since 2013. It is currently working as part of a five -year contract signed in 2023.

According to a current BPS transport report, Transdev employs around 750 active bus drivers in Boston.

At the meeting of the school committee on Wednesday, superintendent Mary Skipper, speaks Asked the Joseph family after a moment of silence.

“Every time we have a student who is injured or has loss of life, we really work directly with the families to support them as much as possible,” she said. “This also includes trying to find out how the social, emotional, mental health and things that the family needs the most can be supported.”

The funeral services for Joseph take place on Saturday.

His family described the child teacher of the Up Academy Dorchester in an obituary as a “intelligent, lively and funny child”, who loved airplanes and cars and the superhero spiderman and who dreamed of becoming a police officer.

The head of the Up Education Network, which runs the K-8 Dorchester Charter School, said in a statement that the school community was “so sad about the loss of one of our students”.

“Our hearts are broken for the family and words cannot express how much this loss will mean for our community,” said CEO Hillary Casson in the explanation. “We will do everything we can to support the family and the students, families and employees in our school community.”

The Joseph family's lawyers said Wbur that they “make changes to all relevant guidelines and procedures”.

“The family suffered an unimaginable loss,” said lawyer Alan J. Klevan. “This tragedy could and could have been completely avoided.”