A 17-year-old boy with special educational needs was left alone on the road in extreme heat after being removed from an intercity bus in the Pleven region because of an expired travel card, sparking public anger and prompting institutional checks.
The teenager was later found dehydrated after more than two hours of searching by his family and police. The incident has raised questions about how a vulnerable passenger was treated and whether the driver followed the proper procedures.
The boy’s father, Yuri Mihaylov, said he learned about what had happened from a woman who was traveling on the same bus. According to him, the passenger offered to pay for the boy’s ticket, but the driver refused and removed him from the vehicle.
The father said his son was left to make his way alone in temperatures reaching 37 degrees Celsius. The search was complicated by high vegetation in the area, but police and relatives eventually found the teenager near the road to the village of Staroseltsi. He was frightened and severely dehydrated.
Bus driver Georgi Todorov said he did not know the teenager had special educational needs and claimed he was unaware of the passenger’s condition. He explained that the boy’s travel card had expired four days earlier and that the teenager said he had no money to buy a new ticket.
