If last Monday had been as hot as it was yesterday, Carolyn Young of Oakland Beach doubts her brother would be alive today.

Her brother, Tom Fulmer, is 61 years old and suffers from severe mental disabilities. He attends the Trudeau Memorial Center program on Commonwealth Avenue and is picked up daily by a RIDE bus at about 7:30 a.m.

That’s what happened last Monday, but Fulmer didn’t get off the bus until 4:30 that afternoon, after being discovered by RIPTA employees. By that point, Fulmer was soaked in his own urine and possibly dehydrated.

The bus driver apparently had not seen him and, on returning to the RIPTA facility, left the bus in a parking lot pending maintenance on its air conditioning system. According to RIPTA, the driver is no longer working at RIPTA.

Young said yesterday she deliberately waited to inform the media of the situation to see how RIPTA would deal with the incident. She said she received a letter of apology.

Young said she became concerned when her brother did not reappear at home at his usual time of 4:30. As she was making calls to locate him, she said she received a call from RIPTA that her brother had been found in the bus and was being taken to Rhode Island Hospital for evaluation. She went to the hospital where she found him. She said he had been labeled as an “unidentified male” even though he had a nametag around his neck and was carrying a lunch box with his name.

“He was dumped off like a sack leaning against the wall,” she said. She said a RIPTA employee did not accompany him to the hospital, where hospital personnel changed him.

Since the report of the incident, RIPTA and the Trudeau Center have initiated measures aimed at ensuring clients are not left unaccounted for.

Trudeau Center President and CEO Donald Armstrong said yesterday he feels a personal responsibility, even though the bus driver should have detected Fulmer’s presence.

Armstrong and Mark Therrien, RIPTA’s assistant general manager of planning, met yesterday to develop a “hard transfer” policy, whereby clients are accounted for when they get on and when they get off the bus.

“We’re going to evaluate this for a week or so and see how well it goes,” Armstrong said.

Armstrong said the policy would be sent to the Department of Behavioral Healthcare Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH) for review.

“We want to see that this doesn’t happen again,” Armstrong said.

“We have improved our practices to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again,” said Therrien.

He explained that when the driver experienced problems with the air conditioning, he dropped the vehicle off to be repaired and continued the route in another bus. A mechanic discovered Fulmer.

Fulmer was checked out and then released by Rhode Island Hospital.

“My brother could have died,” said Young, “This was gross negligence.”

She described her brother as passive and said he does not initiate actions by himself. She said he would sit in one place until moved to another place. She said it is in his character to not get out of the bus on his own or bring attention to his situation.

She said he is also diabetic and “completely helpless.”

Young was highly complementary of the Trudeau program and speculated that, in the past six months, RIDE has been experiencing a lot of driver turnover and she questions whether the newer drivers have been properly trained.

A spokeswoman for BHDDH said an investigation of the incident is being conducted.