A Colorado school bus aide who was arrested for allegedly abusing special needs children is already out on bail.
Kiarra Jones, 29, was allegedly seen on a school bus camera hitting a child with severe autism, ABC News reported. Though the school district was aware of concerns from parents for months, Jones was only arrested and fired on April 4. She was released the next day on $5,000 bond.
Video of Jones’ alleged abuse was released two days before her arrest, but had been filmed on March 18, nearly a month earlier. It shows Jones allegedly elbowing 10-year-old autistic boy Dax in the stomach, slapping him in the face, and stomping on his feet.
Dax attends The Joshua School, a private school in Colorado for students with autism, CBS News reported. Students take a bus dedicated to students with disabilities provided by Littleton Public Schools (LPS). It is there that young students were abused, parents of at least three students have said.
Students would allegedly come home with fractured bones and bruises, and at least one child had a tooth knocked out, CBS reported.
“They took my trust and spit on it,” Dax’s father, Devin, said at a press conference last week.
The parents also discussed their decision to let the video of Dax’s abuse be released to the media without his face being blurred.
“It was a heavy decision to make to uncover it, but we cannot bring attention to this if we don’t look at it,” Dax’s mother, Jess, said at the press conference. “It’s ugly to look at, but it’s important to see how confused and afraid he was in that video. It just speaks to his vulnerability, and it speaks to the terror he had to endure while on that bus.”
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Jess added that she first noticed injuries on Dax in September 2023 and told his school, who said the injuries didn’t occur in their care. Jess then went to LPS, which told her not to be concerned.
“I notified LPS on March 18 and on March 19 got a phone call from Littleton police informing me that an LPS employee had severely abused my child,” she said at the press conference, according to CBS. “I went to the LPS transportation building and was in utter shock.”
At that same press conference, the father of another child said his son is non-verbal, and couldn’t tell him about the alleged abuse.
“My son doesn’t have the ability to tell me when someone is hurting him,” the father said. “My son doesn’t have the ability to tell me that he was forced to watch someone hurt his friends.”
Parents of three children are preparing to sue the school, with attorney Ed C. Hopkins saying the school district knew of the abuse but didn’t stop it sooner.
“They had everything they needed to stop it faster and they didn’t,” Hopkins said. “They had notice and they ignored it. These children have been traumatized and tortured because they failed them.”
Jones was arrested and faces felony assault charges for crimes against at-risk children, ABC reported.
“It was determined that more than one non-verbal autistic student was assaulted by the suspect on a moving school bus while en route to school,” the Englewood Police Department said in a press release on Tuesday. “It was also determined that the suspect was the victims’ assigned paraprofessional employed by Littleton Public School District at the time of the incident.”