Chester County District Attorney Tom Hogan announced this morning that a school bus driver is facing charges of endangering the welfare of a child and recklessly endangering another person after he allegedly left a seven-year-old girl alone on a transportation van for an entire school day.

According to a report issued by the District Attorney's office, Iver T. Roselund, Jr., 66, of Malvern, an employee of the Krapf Bus Company, was driving a school transportation van when he picked up the seven-year-old victim at her home on the morning of Tuesday, March 31. The seven-year-old was Roselund's only passenger that morning, and she was being transported to the Mary D. Lang Kindergarten Center in Kennett Square.

Instead of taking the girl to the school, however, Roselund drove past the Mary D. Lang Kindergarten Center and parked the van at the Krapf Bus Company lot on South Walnut Street in Kennett Square. When the child failed to show up for school, she was marked absent. Later in the afternoon, the school notified the child's mother of the absence. The mother told school officials that the girl had gotten on the bus that morning, starting a frantic search for the child.

She was located at approximately 2:50 p.m. in the school transportation van, still strapped into her seat where she had been for the past six hours.

The Kennett Square Police were called to investigate the incident and during that investigation it was learned that the Krapf Bus Company has a policy that all drivers are required to check their vehicles before leaving them to make sure that no children are still on board. According to the District Attorney's office, Roselund did not perform that check before leaving the van on the bus lot that day.

“This case is a parent's worst nightmare,” Hogan said in a statement. “You put your child on a school bus and that child seems to disappear. The defendant's misconduct seriously endangered this little girl. In the weather we had a month ago, she would have frozen to death. A month from now, she could have died from heatstroke. We are all lucky that she was not seriously hurt. We are all thankful that this little girl was returned to her family.”

Roselund was reportedly fired by Krapf Bus Company after details of this incident were uncovered.