Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2009

4-year-old bitten on bus: What happened and who's to blame?

NEW BADEN -- Family members of a 4-year-old girl who suffered bite wounds on a school bus Friday said the girl's physical wounds are healing but coping with the emotional trauma has been difficult.

"Now we're just mad," said Brittany Hinojosa, mother of 4-year-old Maliyah. "I'm very angry that this happened and I want justice for her, and I don't want this to happen to anyone else's family."

Hinojosa's mother, Paula Montgomery, said another girl who sat next to Maliyah attacked her Friday during the 35-minute bus ride home from Trenton Elementary School to her New Baden bus stop. The attack left Maliyah with several bite wounds and a detached fingernail, she said.

Montgomery met Maliyah at her bus stop that day, and said she stepped on the bus, saw her granddaughter's injuries and asked the bus driver what happened. He said he did not know but that Maliyah had been crying since the bus had left the school, she said.

"I'm so thankful my God held me back that day because he would've been hurt," Montgomery said, adding she wants the bus driver to pay for ignoring Maliyah's cries for help. "I don't want his money. I want him to be fired. I don't want him to travel with children ever again."

Montgomery and Hinojosa said they could understand if there had been one or two bites, but it is hard for them to grasp how the attack was allowed to go on for so long without any intervention from the bus driver.

"All moms feel the pain of their children, and all I think about is the pain she went through and the torment she went through and that no one helped her," Hinojosa said. "... I just can't understand how many bites and how long it happened and how her fingernail got bitten off."

Superintendent David Daum said based on the district's investigation, the bus driver did nothing wrong.

"The bus driver, on a couple of occasions, did stop to investigate to make sure everything was OK," he said. "There was no evidence of anybody being injured."

Montgomery said the bus driver did stop the bus twice but not in response to her granddaughter's screams for help. Instead, she said he stopped once at some railroad tracks and once to let another student off the bus.

Daum said while the incident was an "unfortunate" one, the district has taken "no disciplinary action at this point" against the girl who allegedly bit Maliyah.

Montgomery and her daughter said they place no blame on that girl because they placed Maliyah in the care of adults.

In moving forward from the incident, they said they will be pushing for a school policy and maybe even laws regarding bus drivers' responsibilities for the students they transport and placing monitors on school buses to assist drivers.

They said while police are still trying to determine whether the incident was recorded by a video camera on the bus, they still plan on taking legal action against the driver.

"It's the bus driver's word against my daughters wounds," Hinojosa said. "And at least I know who to believe."

In the meantime, they said they continue to nurse Maliyah's physical and emotional wounds and hope that she will some day overcome her newfound fear of school and school buses.

"I don't believe that we will let her go (back) to school," Montgomery said. "I think we'll just give her time to be a kid and once kindergarten comes, hopefully by then this will be awash and she'll want to go to school."