Brantford parents experienced the scare of their lives, after their six-year-old first grader missed the school bus, and managed to walk home – alone; the school never knew he was missing.

“My daughter comes out bouncing out like she normally would, I sat there staring at the driver and he shut the door and drove away, and I’m like hang on…” said Andrew Heubach.

Heubach then called École Fairview to say his son was missing, but no one picked up.

 “I started panicking; I called the school, and there was nobody there to answer the phone, I just got the answering machine, so I left a message saying I've been everywhere I possibly can, at this point in time my son is missing,” said Heubach.

An hour and a half later, the boy was found by his mother, who spotted Lucas wandering up the street.

“I had no idea there was a problem until there wasn’t, which kind of saved my sanity. I had stopped at Walmart, grabbed some groceries, was driving home and approached complex where we live. I thought ‘that boy has the same coat as Lucas’...  he has the same hat.. and I just kind of pulled up. I could not understand what had let him be in that situation,” said Dawn Russell.

“He said ‘he missed his bus’. When it hit me, he had walked from the school, I felt sick because I know how busy that road is,” said Russell.

Lucas told his parents that he saw the school bus leaving, and tried chasing it down before deciding to make the walk home by himself.

The school board says it’s looking into the incident, but the parents are still frustrated.

“I'm like ok, but did you wait for the crosswalk? he said I couldn’t find it, the cars just let me go, and my heart just went into my throat, that’s when I started losing it,” said Heubach.

The parents allege that the school was unaware of the situation until the next morning, when they picked up Heubach’s panicked voicemail.

“I think what we have to do is make sure that we’re looking at communication, and that would be communication with everyone that's involved, and then of course we have to make sure we’re working with the administration at the school, the teachers in the classroom, the children that are there, and of course  the parents,” said Scott Sincerbox, Superintendent of Education at Grand Erie District School Board.