Photo: Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office
A bus aide in Colorado is facing multiple charges for allegedly beating a 10-year-old boy with special needs. The law firm Rathod Mohamedbhai LLC is representing three families who claim their children were assaulted while riding the bus to school.
Jessica Vestal said that her son, who is nonverbal, started coming home with bruises all over his body in January. The injuries got worse, and Vestal confronted the bus aide, 29-year-old Kiarra Jones after her son came home with a black eye in February.
Vestal said that Jones claimed that his injuries were self-inflicted and that he hit himself in the face with a toy.
When the injuries didn't stop, Vestal asked the school district for security camera footage from the bus. What she saw shocked her.
The video captured Jones elbowing, hitting, kicking, and stomping on Vestal's son as he sat helplessly next to her.
After viewing the security camera footage, the Englewood Police Department launched an investigation and took Jones into custody on felony assault charges for crimes against at-risk children.
"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 police department said in a press release. "It was also determined that the suspect was the victims' assigned paraprofessional employed by Littleton Public School District at the time of the incident."
Two other families claim that their children were abused by Jones and blame the school district for doing nothing to stop it.
"They did a sham investigation in which they looked at one ride," attorney Ciara Anderson said. "They did no other investigation, they asked no other questions, and they provided no other monitoring. Because of these horrific failures by the school district, the bus aide was emboldened to continue her abuse — and she did."
You can watch the shocking video footage below.