Jail for Defendants in Worood Bus Death Case

The Abu Dhabi Court of Misdemeanours has sentenced a supervisor, bus driver and attendant of Al Worood Academy Private School to three years in jail and 20,000 AED fine each for negligence leading to the death of a four-year-old student last year.

The court ordered the school to shut down permanently and has fined it a total of 150,000 AED, while the school transport owner was sentenced to six months in jail and fined 500,000 AED. The defendants were also ordered to pay blood money.

Nizaha Aalaa, a KG-1 pupil at Al Worood Academy Private School, died in October after she was locked in the bus.

According to an earlier report in The National, defense lawyers had argued that it would have been impossible to call the parents of all 1,075 children who were absent on the day of the incident in time to discover the missing girl before she died. Lawyers had also argued the bus was actually licensed by the traffic department of Abu Dhabi Police.

Strict new regulations were introduced for Abu Dhabi school buses at the beginning of February, partly as a result of the case.