An Edmonton mother is demanding answers in the wake of an incident that saw her young son dropped off by a school bus far away from where he was supposed to end up.

Five-year-old Casey rides a school bus, every day after school, to a daycare in Mill Woods. On Monday, however, he never arrived.

An hour after he was supposed to be dropped off, his mother Simone Cardinal got a call from the daycare saying her son hadn’t arrived.

“I’m in shock,” Cardinal said, describing the moments after the call.

She told CTV News her son was dropped off at the end of his bus route, a residential area about four kilometres south of his daycare. Casey was there until a mother in the area saw him standing on the sidewalk, and called police.

“It’s getting to be dark, it’s cold, he doesn’t recognize anything,” Cardinal said. “I’m just grateful there’s a lady who noticed him and took him into her home.”

While she’s grateful Casey was okay, she’s upset her son was apparently forgotten by the bus driver.

“Casey had fallen asleep, however, the bus driver failed to check ‘Where’s Casey?’” Cardinal said.

Casey attends Ben Calf Robe Elementary School, officials with the Edmonton Catholic School District admit a serious mistake wsa made.

“The driver failed to do his job correctly,” Debbie Hunter with Edmonton Catholic said. “It was a human error.”

CTV News has learned the driver has been banned from driving school buses for Edmonton Catholic, and his employer, First Student Canada, confirmed an investigation is underway – the company apologized for what happened.

However, that’s not enough for Cardinal.

“That apology doesn’t matter, I want an apology from the bus driver,” Cardinal said.

This is not the first case of its kind to take place in the city, Edmonton Catholic said all five contracted bus carriers have lost track of a child at least once.

With files from Dan Grummett