NORMAL -- Jeff Smith panicked Wednesday because almost an hour had passed and his severely disabled son hadn't arrived by school bus.

The Unit 5 school bus had come and gone, but Hunter, 12, didn't come home from Autism Camp at Parkside Junior High School.

Hunter is a "sweet, innocent and unassuming" child, his father said. He doesn't have the capacity to know that he was lost and would have gotten in a car with anyone.

After Smith made several frantic calls to the school, Hunter was found and brought home.

Now officials at the Normal-based school district are investigating what went wrong. The bus driver and monitor both were suspended until the investigation is complete, said Superintendent Gary Niehaus.

"There is a procedure in place. We need to know where the procedure broke down," Niehaus said.

If fault is found the school board will take action, he said.

Hunter attends the camp from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. each day and normally gets home about 1:40 p.m. That didn't happen on Wednesday because he was dropped off on the wrong street blocks away from home.

Smith said Wednesday he didn't know the details of what his son was doing when he was found, and the district won't release details while the investigation is pending.

Smith routinely calls his 14-year-old son, Tristin Smith, about 2 p.m. to make sure Hunter gets home safely. On Wednesday, he discovered the bus had gone by at the usual time, but his younger son had not gotten off.

At first Jeff Smith was calm, thinking his son was likely on a bus somewhere. He called the junior high school, but he didn't get any answer.

After finally reaching someone, he waited on hold repeatedly before talking to school officials. He realized then that his son was missing.

"That's when I started to panic," he said.

"It went on, and on," he said of waiting. "My head was swimming."

The Smiths had been concerned in the past when the bus let Hunter off on the wrong side of the street because the youngster can't cross the street safely on his own, Smith said. They had previously talked to school officials about this.

Fearing the worst and lacking answers, Smith broke into tears and left work at O'Brien Mitsubishi to go home. He also called his ex-wife, and she began to worry too.

Soon he received a call from Unit 5 that Hunter had been found on another street.

Minutes later the boy got off the bus, greeted Smith with "Hi, Daddy" and went in the house to get a snack and play video games. The child had no idea how afraid his family had been for him.

"I was just happy to see him," his father said.