Mum blasts tram driver for stranding boy on platform

Simone Brown said her son Jayden was left “traumatised” when the doors of a tram closed before he could get on with his mother.

Although Ms Brown, 26, was frantically pushing the “door open” button and shouting for help, a ticketing assistant standing nearby failed to notify the driver before the tram moved off, leaving Jayden “crying his eyes out” on the platform at Edinburgh Park.

Tram bosses admitted the driver then decided it would be safer to continue towards Bankhead station and alert the control room to the fact Jayden had been left behind.

Staff then kept watch over the six-year-old through CCTV and used the station’s intercom system to ask a member of the public to stay with him until Ms Brown arrived after disembarking at Bankhead.

But the mum of two from Carrick Knowe – who had just finished a food shop and was pushing her eight-week-old son in a pram when the incident occurred yesterday afternoon – said the driver should have stopped to let her off.

And she accused ticketing staff of not reacting quickly enough when it became clear there was a problem.

She said: “I was petrified – they should have let me off.

“It’s not like there’s one tram after the other. The driver knew within seconds of the tram moving that Jayden wasn’t on. I could have got off and crossed safely.

“We were about two carriages away from the driver. The assistant was right beside me when it started.

“He saw it straight away but he just walked towards the driver’s end at a normal pace.

“There was no sense of, ‘I’ll get to the driver quickly to let him know’.”

Ms Brown said she got on the tram with her bags and baby son’s pram at Edinburgh Park at around 12.45pm yesterday, thinking that Jayden was “right behind her”. “As I got on the doors shut,” she said. “I saw Jayden was trying to push the button and I was trying to push the button, but it was red, which was stopping the doors from opening.

“I was screaming, upset. They didn’t say anything about calling the control centre or CCTV. All they said was that they could not open the door and they couldn’t stop until the next station. I was worried that Jayden was going to walk off or something else.”

Transport for Edinburgh said every tram has a “kill” brake which a driver can use to stop the vehicle in an emergency.

But they insisted their employee had made the right decision to ensure the safety of everyone concerned.

A spokesman said: “As soon as our staff became aware, the control room was informed and they kept a watch over the child using CCTV.

“Further to this, a female passenger at the stop was contacted by our control team and she agreed to stay with the boy until he was reunited with his mum.”