Complaint About Driver Ignored, Parent Charges

Los Angeles school board member Julie Korenstein said Friday she is looking into a parent’s allegation that district officials ignored her complaint months ago about the questionable behavior of a school bus driver arrested last week on charges he drove a bus while drunk.

Patricia Marhle said she gave a handwritten letter to the former principal of Lorne Street Elementary School in Northridge in which she complained about bus driver Harold Keith Lone, who arrived with his passengers more than an hour late on the first day of school.

Marhle said in the Sept. 18 letter that Lone got lost and stopped at a liquor store, where he left the children unattended for several minutes. Lone was assigned to another school afterward because parents complained about his being late, district officials said.

Lone, who had five prior drunk-driving convictions and had obtained his job using an alias, was arrested Jan. 16 on suspicion of drunk driving at Lanai Street Elementary School in Encino shortly before he was to pick up 57 children there. Lone, a Laidlaw Transit employee, was staggering and his blood-alcohol level measured more than three times the new legal limit of 0.8% when he was arrested, Los Angeles police said.

Marhle said she recognized Lone’s picture after his arrest and remembered him as the driver that she had complained about last fall. She said Kassaye Makuria, then the Lorne principal, told her that her letter would be forwarded to district officials in charge of transportation.

Makuria is on medical leave and cannot be reached, district officials said. Lorne’s current principal, Fanny Humphrey, said there is no record of Marhle’s letter in school files.

Administrators in charge of transportation for the Los Angeles Unified School District said that leaving children unattended in a bus is grounds for dismissal. Such a complaint would have warranted an immediate investigation by district inspectors, officials said.

But Rupert W. Dunevant, head of transportation, said there is no record of Marhle’s letter. He said that he spoke with Marhle over the telephone, but that she complained about the turnover in bus drivers and not any incident involving Lone.

Randy Altenberg, deputy director of transportation, said that an Oct. 3 letter received from Makuria listed complaints by parents whose students ride the bus to school. But those complaints concerned the high turnover of school bus drivers and worry about the safety of a bus stop at Roscoe Boulevard and Woodman Avenue.

“The letter doesn’t mention Lone at all,” Altenberg said. “And it does not mention anything having to do with misbehavior on the part of drivers.”

Korenstein said she wants to find out “who knew about this driver and why wasn’t something done before. I’ve spoken to both the mother and father three times in the last 24 hours, and I have no reason not to believe them.”