A YOUNG mum was left “disgusted” after she claimed a bus driver shouted at her and threatened to throw her off the vehicle because her baby was crying.

Sophie-May Dickson, 21, said she was left shocked when the bus journey from Canvey’s Haystack pub, in Furtherwick Road, to Basildon town centre, turned into a nightmare.

Mrs Dickson was on the way to Basildon on the First bus with her one-year-old daughter Precious and her 16-year-old cousin Elsie Wreden, when the baby began to cry.

The mother claims the woman bus driver began shouting at her and said she “couldn’t concentrate”

due to the child’s screams and ordered her to “shut the baby up”.

Mrs Dickson, of Thisselt Road, Canvey, said: “It made me feel uncomfortable when she said ‘will you shut this baby up?’.

“It’s not just someone walking down the road saying it, it’s someone who is professional.”

The embarrassed mother stayed on the bus to finish her journey following the incident, which happened on Tuesday.

However, she said she will now think twice before using public transport again.

She added: “It’s put me off public transport.

“It’s not like my child is a bad child, she was just a bit upset, she’s teething and it was hot. We were doing whatever we could to make her be quiet.

“A bus driver is supposed to be a people person. But when she said that to me, it made the tension rise and made Precious worse.

“It’s not like it was a loud teenager playing music, she’salittle girl.

“I was disgusted.

“Even when I got off the bus people were saying her behaviour was disgusting.”

Elsie, who also lives in Thisselt Road, made an official complaint to First bus service yesterday.

She said: “The driver started having a go, saying she couldn’t drive the bus with a baby crying in her earhole, suggesting we needed to get off the bus.

“We don’t think it’s right for us to be spoken to like that.

“If she can’t concentrate if a baby is crying, why is she a bus driver?”

A spokesman for bus company First said it was investigating the allegations.

They added: “We will be speaking to the member of staff involved.

“Our drivers are trained to a high standard of customer care and we would not expect anyone from First to act in this way.”