Special-needs student, 22, left on NYC bus in cold

[January 02, 2009]  NEW YORK (AP) -- A 22-year-old man with cerebral palsy spent a frigid New Year's night alone on a school bus after a caretaker left him there, police and his family said.

Authorities said police found Edwin Rivera in a bus yard Thursday morning. He had been on the bus for 19 hours while the temperature outside dropped below 20 degrees.

Rivera, who cannot speak, was being evaluated at a hospital. He was expected to recover.

Authorities arrested 51-year-old Linda Hockaday, the bus matron responsible for looking after him, on a charge of reckless endangerment, police said. No information was immediately available on whether she had a lawyer, and there was no phone number listed under her name and address.

His parents reported Rivera missing Wednesday evening after he didn't return home from his special-needs school.

"I'm so relieved, and I'm so mad at the bus company for leaving him," his sister Leslie Rivera told WCBS-TV.

A possible phone number for the bus company was answered Thursday only by a recording that would not accept messages.

[Associated Press]

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