A mother is calling for the termination of a BART employee, who reportedly turned away her son for needing 40 cents more to board a train. (Bay Area Rapid Transit via Facebook)
A Northern California mother is calling on a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) employee to be fired after turning away her son who needed 40 cents more to board a train last week, reports said.
Catalina Ocampo of Richmond said the employee put her son Sebastian in danger and left him with no way to get home, the Bay Area’s KNTV-TV reported.
"They were like, 'Oh you can’t go because you don’t have 40 cents; you have to have more money to go in,'" Sebastian told the channel. "I didn’t have no money, no nothing, everything was in my Clipper Card."
He was attempting to board a train from the BART McArthur station in Oakland, the report said. When he wasn't able to board the train, he called his mother and told him the situation.
"It’s extremely upsetting for us to hear that," BART spokeswoman Alicia Trost told KNTV. "That’s not what we are here to do."
She said the employee should have given the sixth-grader a pay voucher.
"A pay voucher that says you owe us 40 cents and then continue on your trip," Trost said. "We don’t want anyone being kicked out, especially an 11-year old."
The agency followed up with the family to help identify the employee, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
"We want to make sure that's not what happened and if so, we want to take corrective actions to prevent it from happening again," Trost told the paper. "We would take disciplinary action because the agent didn't follow protocol."
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