{"id":28272,"date":"2024-04-10T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-04-10T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/littleton-school-bus-aide-accused-of-beating-nonverbal-autistic-boys-during-rides\/"},"modified":"2024-04-10T13:00:00","modified_gmt":"2024-04-10T13:00:00","slug":"littleton-school-bus-aide-accused-of-beating-nonverbal-autistic-boys-during-rides","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/littleton-school-bus-aide-accused-of-beating-nonverbal-autistic-boys-during-rides\/","title":{"rendered":"Littleton school bus aide accused of beating nonverbal autistic boys during rides"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"(AP
(AP Photo\/Jenny Kane)<\/span>Jenny Kane<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A Littleton school bus assistant repeatedly abused at least two severely disabled boys during trips to and from a school for kids with autism and developmental disabilities, police said, and they fear there could be additional victims.<\/p>\n

Kiarra Jones, a 29-year-old paraprofessional, has been charged with a low-level felony on assault charges and has posted a bond at the Arapahoe County Jail.<\/p>\n

Police said in her seven-month tenure as an assistant on a school bus for kids with special needs, she hit and physically abused at least two children by pulling their hair, elbowing them in the face, stomach, and back, and flicking their faces.<\/p>\n

Neither of the boys can talk, but both were crying during the bus ride, police documents said, \u201cMs. Jones was hired by LPS in August 2023 after satisfactory reference checks and after passing a thorough background check. She had very limited access to students during her employment with LPS. She has had no contact with students since March 19, the day her employment was terminated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Parents of the boys said police told them they believe her abuse was systemic and frequent and there are likely more victims.<\/p>\n

Jones also endeared herself to several of the parents and gained their trust, all while she was abusing their children, parents said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI literally bought her Christmas presents at Christmastime and tea when she wasn\u2019t feeling good,\u201d said Jessica Vestal, the mother of a slight 10-year-old boy with sandy hair who was repeatedly abused by Jones, according to video footage on the bus. \u201cIt\u2019s disgusting and every day, it was, \u2018Oh, you guys are my favorite family on the bus’ \u2026 It\u2019s sick. It\u2019s insane, but he\u2019s safe now.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a letter to parents, Littleton Public Schools Superintendent Todd Lambert said: Ms. Jones was hired by LPS in August 2023 after satisfactory reference checks and after passing a thorough background check. She had very limited access to students during her employment with LPS. She has had no contact with students since March 19, the day her employment was terminated.<\/p>\n

This is the third known district in seven years where a bus assistant reportedly abused children with disabilities. A Larimer County paraprofessional with a history of child abuse was accused of punching autistic kids on a Poudre School District bus in May 2023. And in Boulder in 2017, a woman was convicted of abusing a disabled girl on a school bus repeatedly for seven days.<\/p>\n

Kevin Yarbrough\u2019s son is believed to be a victim, according to police, because he had an unexplained broken foot bone in the fall, and Jones was reportedly stomping on the children\u2019s feet.<\/p>\n

At a press conference on Tuesday, Yarbrough said he felt like he failed his son.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m here today because I failed,\u201d he said. \u201cI failed him by trusting that the ladies on the bus and the people of the Littleton school district would also be there to protect him. I had assumed that when his teachers had a rough time getting off the bus, that there wasn\u2019t a grown woman who was verbally and physically torturing my son and his friends. My son doesn\u2019t have the ability to tell me when school is hurting him.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a video released Tuesday by civil rights attorneys, Jones can be seen in camera footage from the bus elbowing Vestal\u2019s son in the torso and shoulders and stomping on his foot. The video was captured on March 19, 2024. Vestal\u2019s son came home that day with a large bruise on the top of his foot, it looked like a bowling ball was dropped on it, his mother said.<\/p>\n

She called the police and that was Jones\u2019 last day at work, she said.<\/p>\n

Jones has no serious criminal history except for some driving infractions. A public profile of her shows that she worked as a dispatcher for a towing company before getting the job at Littleton Public Schools in the summer of 2023.<\/p>\n

The affidavit filed by Englewood Police described another day of abuse on the bus. On Feb. 13, an officer said he watched a video that depicted Jones repeatedly abusing Vestal\u2019s son, hitting him in the mouth with a closed fist, poking him in the chin, hitting him with the back of her hand and pulling his hair. She also repeatedly dropped a toy on the ground and when he went to get it, she would hold his head down and then grab his jaw.<\/p>\n

That same day, a video shows Jones pulling the hair of another student, whose parents also spoke out on Tuesday and called for accountability for Littleton Public Schools.<\/p>\n

Blake McBride said he got a call from the Littleton superintendent Todd Lambert, who \u201censured us that our son was not present or a victim in this case.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, he said, 24 hours later, he was told by an Englewood police officer that his son was the second victim, according to videos on the bus.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe haven\u2019t seen the video,\u201d McBride said. \u201cWe have asked for the videos and we were met with lies. We want Littleton to be held accountable for what has happened to our children.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ed Hopkins Jr. is an attorney representing three families so far and called for Littleton Public Schools to hold themselves fully accountable.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was an institutional failure. Multiple people had to fail for this to happen,\u201d Hopkins said. \u201cThere was video in the bus and it still happened over months. The family reached out to the school and it still continued to happen over months. That\u2019s failure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hopkins and the families said they started reaching out to The Joshua School, a private school contracted by Littleton to provide services, back in the fall with concerns about unknown injuries and panic attacks their children were suffering after bus rides.<\/p>\n

Lawyers said on Tuesday they are unclear whether Littleton ever embarked on any internal investigation or looked at the bus camera footage to figure out the source of the abuse. Englewood police officers are currently reviewing up to eight weeks of footage, which is as much as they have. They discard it every eight weeks, lawyers said.<\/p>\n

Vestal said she had a mom instinct that something was wrong this entire school year with her 10-year-old son.<\/p>\n

He had been thriving in school and loved cuddling and hugs. But his mood had shifted and he was frequently dissolving into two-hour meltdowns when he got home, weeping and despondent.<\/p>\n

Then Vestal noticed the bruises.<\/p>\n

Because he sometimes injured himself, she knew that minor scrapes and bumps were par for the course.<\/p>\n

But these were different, bruises on his body, on his neck. He came home with a black eye. He came home without one of his back baby teeth, even though it hadn\u2019t been loose that morning. And one time, he came home with a massive wad of gum stuck purposefully in his hair, above his neck, even though gum was specifically prohibited everywhere he went.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019d think having cameras on the bus would mean better safety, obviously that\u2019s not the case,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The parents overwhelmingly said in interviews that the news of the abuse has created a renewed crisis of trust in a world where they have to fight every day for their kids.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe fight with school districts over our kids\u2019 IEPs (individualized education plans). And we fight with doctors. We fight all damn day,\u201d Brittany Yarbrough said. \u201cBut we never, it never even occurred to us, that it could be someone on the bus. Because you shouldn\u2019t have to fight for their safety. That just wasn\u2019t even a thought. It\u2019s like, of course, they\u2019re going to keep our kids safe. Forget about the education. Keeping our kids safe was something we never questioned.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jones has a court date in May. The parents of the victims said on Tuesday they plan on attending the Littleton Public Schools board meeting on Thursday to demand change to safety protocols and hiring.<\/p>\n

To read more stories from Colorado Public Radio, visit www.cpr.org<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(AP Photo\/Jenny Kane)Jenny Kane A Littleton school bus assistant repeatedly abused at least two severely disabled boys during trips to and from a school for kids with autism and developmental disabilities, police said, and they fear there could be additional victims. Kiarra Jones, a 29-year-old paraprofessional, has been charged with a low-level felony on assault […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27834,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[120,168,155,28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-28272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-colorado","tag-crime","tag-education","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28272"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=28272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}