Lens Arthur Joseph woke up like he normally did that Monday morning in late April, the 5-year-old gently nudged awake by his grandmother.
Always fastidious in his appearance, he brushed his teeth and tongue, dressed, then tucked into his breakfast of bread, eggs, fruit, and milk. The family matriarch, Andrea Edmond, who cared for the boy as her own son, packed his school bag with homework and drawings of Spider-Man inside, then took her perch on the dark gray family couch to watch for the bus from the second-floor window.
It was a day like a hundred others — until it went terribly wrong.
That afternoon, Edmond was waiting for the bus when her adult daughter spotted police rushing around outside, but a neighbor’s home obstructed their view. The two women rushed out their door. In a moment, horror dawned on Edmond as she viewed the scene.
The school bus stopped a few doors down. Her granddaughter, on the sidewalk, screaming hysterically. The body, the size of a child, on the street. And no Lens.
Terror gripped Edmond like a vise, and she screamed at the police officer blocking her way.
Let me see my grandson!
There have been few answers in the nearly two months since Lens was struck and killed by his Boston Public Schools bus April 28, seconds after being dropped off at the wrong stop on the wrong side of the street with his 11-year-old cousin.
The driver has not been charged in connection with his death, while the Suffolk district attorney’s office and Boston police continue their investigation, and they have released no updates since the crash occurred.
Nearly a month following the crash, and after the Globe reported that the bus driver struck two other vehicles in Mattapan just minutes before the fatal crash, and tried to flee the Hyde Park scene, Mayor Michelle Wu and BPS Superintendent Mary Skipper announced an independent investigation of Transdev, the French contractor that provides bus drivers to the city’s public schools. They also have not provided updates on their investigation, which is being led by a former federal prosecutor.
City and school officials have said the bus driver, Jean Charles, had been pulled from the road for retraining after a series of collisions while behind the wheel. Charles, who worked for Transdev as a BPS bus driver starting in May 2023, resigned last month, just ahead of a scheduled termination hearing. At the time of the crash, he had an expired state certification required to drive a school bus.
Lens was a bright, gregarious child with a sunshiny disposition; his life was cut short, leaving an ache — and anger — in the hearts of his family, his school, and community.
For Esaie Joseph, Lens’s father, the lack of answers is maddening: How could this happen? Where is the accountability? How will this be prevented from ever happening again?
There is no backpack by the door, his Spider-Man toys no longer littered across the living room. Lens is not there to ask how he can help or sweetly nudge his grandmother to make spaghetti for dinner.
“We still talk about him; we’re never going to stop talking about him,” Joseph said in an exclusive interview with the Globe. “But every time it happens, we all get emotional, and we all start to cry.”
Lens was born in Haiti in August 2019. Four years later, Lens came to the US, where he lived in Hyde Park with several generations of his family, including his father, uncle, older cousin, and grandmother. His mother also lives in the region and was active in Lens’s life.
He was an old soul, prioritizing chores over play, responsibility over goofing around. At his funeral, his uncle, Ricardo Joseph, described Lens as a grown man who lived in the body of a 5-year-old.
“He was a great worker who always had something to do,” the boy’s uncle said. “If he wasn’t playing, he was cleaning; if he wasn’t cleaning, he was doing homework.”
Sophonia Lucien-Fontin, who has known the family for several years, and whose husband grew up with Lens’s dad and uncle in Haiti, said Lens was like the “2.0” version of his father.
Lens looked up to his dad, who she described as responsible, hard-working, and funny, and Lens took after him, she said. “He’s exactly like his father,” she said.
Lens also idolized superheroes, and Spider-Man was his favorite. The comic book hero fights crime and has a mantra, “With great power comes great responsibility,” and that message appeared to resonate with Lens.
Spider-Man doesn’t look for someone to reward him for doing good, Lucien-Fontin said. “That’s exactly what was going on with Lens.”
For his kindergarten graduation at the end of the school year, Lens picked out a dazzling suit — a dark, handsome “Spider-Man blue,” Lucien-Fontin said.
Instead, he was buried in that suit, his body laid to rest in a casket decorated with images of Spider-Man.
He took the superhero’s example of doing good to heart. Lens thought police officers do that work every day, and wanted to become one when he grew up, Lucien-Fontin said.
He wanted to serve his country, his uncle said. Such dreams will never be realized.
At the time of the bus crash, Esaie Joseph, Lens’s father, was driving a commercial truck through North Carolina.
He had been away from home for several days at that point, and the time away from family had been taking its toll. Lens last spoke to his father the Friday before the crash, in a video call.
“He called me and said, ‘You’ve been out for too long. You have to find a way to come back home,’ “ said Joseph, who said he feels tremendous guilt for not being at home when the crash occurred.
He compared his son’s life to a force of nature, maybe a crack of lightning. A flash of light, brilliant but brief. Or an object in the heavens.
“He’s a star that just went away,” Joseph said of his son. “I just thought his mission was over on Earth, because it was like lightning that just struck, and disappeared.”
At UP Academy Dorchester, where Lens was a kindergartner, the boy stood out as a helper, according to his teacher, Christina Vick. He’d offer to pass out assignments or guide classmates through a tough math problem.
When students lined up in the cafeteria at dismissal so they could board their buses, Lens loved to be the “line leader,” a role he cherished, assisting the educators by guiding his peers from one destination to the other, the example of how to walk down the hall orderly.
The day he died, there was much to celebrate in his classroom. Lens had just made a breakthrough in his reading, Vick said.
Haitian Creole is spoken in the Joseph home, while Lens spoke English in school, according to Vick. He excelled at arithmetic, but struggled with reading English words.
Vick recalled the challenge Lens faced: A word starting with “c”? Maybe it means “cat.”
But on that late April day, Lens, for the first time, started sounding out the words. He listened to each syllable, how one by one they blended together, the sounds turning into meaning.
As his mind opened itself to reading, his smile grew wide, Vick, who is a nine-year educator, recalled.
“When I see a student thriving, I know I did my job,” Vick said. “And he was thriving.”
While Lens’s father and uncle were at work, his grandmother, Edmond, the matriarch of the family, would care for the boy. Lens, in turn, wanted to help her.
Edmond, who has a strong voice, expressive hands, and bright, clear eyes, is on her feet all day running the large household. At times, she would take a moment to sit on the living room couch, a few steps from the family kitchen.
If Lens saw this, he’d grow concerned. Like clockwork, the questions would start. Grandma, he’d say, do you have a headache? Do you want some water?
When Edmond said she was OK, Lens would stay with her. “He would give me a hug, and say, ‘You’re just tired,’ “ Edmond said in Haitian Creole through an interpreter, a smile growing upon her lips.
The highlight of her day was in the afternoon, when he and his 11-year-old cousin returned home from school. The bus stop was just outside their home, and by the time she made her way downstairs, Lens would come bounding off the vehicle’s steps, his toothy grin and bubbling laugh rolling over her as they came together in a great hug.
How was your day? Edmond would always ask, and Lens would rattle off every detail: The math problem he solved brilliantly. How he helped his teacher by getting kids lined up for lunch. The funny joke his friend shared.
Edmond would listen intently, barely able to get a word in, as the child chatted away, fits of laughter throughout his tales.
“He was my son,” the matriarch said. “He was my hero.”
But the afternoon of April 28 changed everything.
Nathaniel Thomas, who lives in the same neighborhood as Lens’s family, was off-duty from his job as a Massachusetts Environmental Police officer.
As he drove, he spotted a stopped school bus on Washington Street, and saw a girl, Lens’s 11-year-old cousin, standing on the sidewalk less than a block away, screaming. A child’s body lay in the street.
Thomas stopped his car, and ran to the child on the roadway, a little boy whose injuries clearly indicated he had been struck by a large vehicle. Thomas remained with the boy for several minutes, trying to help him as best as he could. The girl continued screaming.
That’s my cousin! she yelled through tears.
A yellow bus was stopped about 100 feet away. Between sobs, the young girl pointed to the vehicle, yelling that the vehicle had struck her cousin.
Neighbors rushed up, some on their phones calling for help. He left the boy in their care, and ran toward the bus, up the vehicle’s steps, and confronted the driver — later named by officials as Charles — still behind the wheel.
Thomas identified himself as a police officer. Stay here, Thomas ordered. Give me your license.
The driver, who Thomas said appeared to be in his 30s or 40s, slender, clean-shaven, wearing a dark hat, waved his hand back at the children: “I have these kids,” the driver said. “I have to leave.”
Thomas said the driver appeared in shock and he told the driver he wasn’t going anywhere. The driver handed over his identification, which Thomas then gave to the first Boston police officer on the scene.
Emergency crews arrived.
Nearby, Edmond watched as the paramedics rushed to load Lens into an ambulance bound for Boston Children’s Hospital. She pushed up against an officer, pleading to be allowed to pass.
No, you’re not going to be able to see him. We cannot let you see him, the officer told Edmond.
She was taken by authorities to Boston Children’s Hospital with Lens’s other family members, but she wasn’t allowed to be near him, as surgeons fought to save his life.
Now, the sight of a school bus in the neighborhood has become a body blow.
“I don’t know how I’m going to go through life without him,” Edmond said on a recent afternoon, tears rolling down her cheeks. “I’m just going through this pain over and over again.”
She paused, wiping the tears from her eyes, as she gazed out the window. “Oh God, let me see him again, one last time,” she said.
The family wants accountability, Esaie Joseph said. He can’t understand how the bus driver, with all the training that is required, could strike a child he had just dropped off.
The family has not heard directly from Transdev since the crash, Joseph said. And despite their requests, they still haven’t seen footage from the cameras mounted to the bus.
Joseph said the family wants to work with state legislators to strengthen laws on school bus safety and driver training. There should be monitors on all school buses so children are able to board and exit the vehicles safely, he said. Right now, the buses aren’t safe, he said.
“They could give more training to the drivers and educate them better in terms of safety,” Joseph said.
For now, the family is also focused on healing. Their attention is on Lens’s cousin, the girl with him at the time of the crash.
She doesn’t talk much about what happened. But she remains affected by the tragedy.
“Sometimes she would, out of nowhere, she will just say his name,” Joseph said.
Lens’s classmates miss him, too. They struggle with the notion Lens won’t come back.
“They talk about him every single day, and they have so many questions,” Vick said. “I don’t have the answers. It’s just hard.”
For the remainder of the school year, Lens’s classroom cubby remained decorated by self-portraits and scenes of the classroom drawn by students, a Spider-Man poster signed by everyone in the class is also on display.
On the last day of school last Wednesday, when students cleaned up their stuff to take home, Vick collected the poster and artwork.
She thinks she’ll put it back in the fall, so Lens isn’t forgotten.
The Great Divide team explores educational inequality in Boston and statewide. Sign up to receive our newsletter, and send ideas and tips to thegreatdivide@globe.com.
John Hilliard can be reached at john.hilliard@globe.com or on Signal at john_hilliard.70. Follow him on Bluesky at iamjohnhilliard.bsky.social.