Crying Baby Empties Bus…In Protest of the Driver

A Hillsboro, Ore., bus driver who reportedly kicked a mother and her infant off the bus after the baby wouldn’t stop screaming has been placed on administrative leave.

Passengers on the bus had stormed off after the mother and child when the driver ordered them off, leaving him alone.

TriMet spokeswoman Mary Fetsch told ABCNews.com that her office has received six complaints from people who were on the bus during the incident.

“This is something we take very seriously,” Fetsch said.

One passenger, Jennifer Chapman, herself a young mother, told the Oregonian she was outraged.

“I don’t care if the baby was screaming her head off, which she wasn’t, you don’t drop a woman off in the dark with her baby,” Chapman said.

While some people left in support of the mother, others may have been tired of the bus not moving.

“Several of the riders would call out to move along, that it wasn’t bothering anyone else, and more than a few delved into obscene name calling toward the driver. The driver then compounded the whole thing by spitting heatedly that anyone who didn’t like it could get off the bus as well,” wrote one rider in a submission to Rantings of a Transit Bus Driver, an Oregon blog run by a bus driver named Al Margulies.

Margulies  said these kinds of incidents happen, but drivers are trained on how to handle them.

“If she got to a point where she was unable to drive the bus, she should have pulled over and called for a supervisor,” Margulies told ABCNews.com. “That would have been the right thing.”