DUNDEE
A disabled boy who was left unattended on a bus at a depot for three hours is now being taken to nursery in a taxi.
Leeland Connor, who attends the Frances Wright Pre-School Centre in Dundee, is autistic, epileptic and suffers from severe developmental delay.
He was left on a council-chartered bus — having been picked up at 12.10pm.
The bus driver dropped off the other children at the nursery and then headed to a depot on Morgan Street.
Leeland sat alone for three hours at the depot.
He was not discovered until the bus returned to pick up the children from the nursery to transport them home at 3.30pm.
The three-year-old is now being taken to and from the nursery by taxi because his parents can’t bear to see him travel on the bus again.
Speaking on behalf of the family, Catherine Johnston said that her grandson Leeland is showing signs of stress following the incident.
She said: “The council has put on a taxi service for Leeland.
“He isn’t happy about it — he was screaming and crying when he had to go into it last Thursday.
“He realises that something happened to him but he can’t tell us.
“Leeland’s way of telling us is throwing a fit and crying.
“There was no way that he was going back on that bus.
“We feel like if this has happened once then it could happen again.
“We just can’t take the chance.”
A Dundee City Council spokesman said that a thorough investigation into the circumstances is ongoing.
A spokesman told the Tele: “Council officers have been in contact with the family.”
The bus company at the centre of the incident, Airport Travel Dundee Ltd, has also launched an investigation — pledging that “it will never happen again”.
Leeland’s family are currently considering taking legal action against the council as a result.
They are liaising with a solicitor with a view to possible court proceedings.
Catherine added: “We are going to do everything that we can because we need to make sure that no other child goes through what Leeland had to go through.”
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NORTH WALES
The jury in the trial of a North Wales taxi driver accused of raping a drunk female passenger has retired to consider its verdicts – despite him not attending court today (September 26).
Sultan Amari, 46, of Chester Road in Flint, denies two counts of raping the student at a house he owned on Sealand Road on July 11 last year.
On Friday, he told members of the jury at Warrington Crown Court that he ‘would not even consider touching somebody who was not responding’, and claimed that the complainant instigated sexual intercourse on the first occasion and that all sexual contact between them was consensual.
But Amari – who was living in Colwyn Close in Ellesmere Port at the time of the alleged attacks – was absent for proceedings today, and his trial continued without him.
Addressing the ‘elephant in the room’, Judge Tina Landale urged the seven women and five men on the jury not to guess why he was not present.
“All I can say to you is he is not here and we are going to continue with the trial,” she said.
Student claims Flint taxi driver raped her twice after night out
Amari’s alleged victim claims she cannot recall anything that happened in between leaving a bar in Chester and waking up naked and alone in an unfamiliar house, but later had a flashback that she was lying face-down on a mattress, unable to move her arms or open her eyes, with a man having intercourse with her.
Closing the prosecution’s case, barrister Simon Mills said the complainant’s ‘plainly strange’ behaviour in asking Amari to ‘take her anywhere in Cheshire’ and telling him that she would look after him seconds after getting into his cab ‘would put a taxi driver on notice that something is not right’.
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THE parent company of Coventry-based manufacturer, London Taxi Company, has become the latest firm to sponsor the UK’s attempt to break the world land speed record.
China-based Zhejiang Geely Holding Group (ZGH) will be the prime sponsor and Official Automotive Partner of the Bloodhound supersonic car after signing a new three-year agreement.
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A Metropolitan police officer from Croydon has been sacked for dodging a £24 taxi fare following a night out with colleagues.
Nicola Elston, 30, was ordered to pay £1,150 earlier this year at the end of a trial, after she made off without paying from a taxi in the borough.
Now she has been dismissed without notice from the Met after a misconduct hearing found her actions amounted to gross misconduct.
Elston, who served on the force for seven years and was most recently attached to Lambeth borough, was found guilty after a three-day trial at Southwark Crown Court in March, and ordered to pay a £150 fine and £1,000 in costs.
The court heard how Elston refused to pay the fare and fled after an argument with the driver in Croydon on July 27 last year. She was arrested later that night.
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