In January, Jessica Vestal’s 10-year-old autistic son, unable to speak, came home from school in suburban Denver with bruises all over his body.
Other injuries followed, including a black eye suffered in February by a bus aide who allegedly hit him with a toy, and a bruised leg in March.
Vestal was asked last month to review the bus surveillance video, released Tuesday, but it was the first time she learned that the bus assistant was abusing her son.
The aide, Kiara Jones, 28, is charged with one count of third-degree assault of an endangered person, according to court records.
She was released shortly after her arrest and did not return calls seeking comment at a phone number listed for her.
She is being represented by a lawyer from the public defender’s office, which has not commented on the case to the media.
Littleton Public Schools Superintendent Todd Lambert said in an April 5 letter to parents that Jones was fired after his arrest.
“This type of behavior should not and will not be tolerated. As parents, you trust us with the well-being of your children and you do not want them to be harmed while in our care.” You never have to worry about that,” Lambert wrote.
The school district did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday on claims by Vestal, his attorney and other parents that the district failed to investigate what was behind the unexplained injuries the children suffered.
They are considering a lawsuit against the school district.
Since learning what happened to Vestal’s son, Brittany Yarborough now believes Jones is also responsible for injuries sustained by her 11-year-old nonverbal son on the same bus.
Police in Englewood, Colorado, said in a statement that they discovered multiple autistic students were abused and continue to examine “vast amounts” of video and other evidence to confirm the identities of all the victims. He said that
Vestal was only able to watch her son get elbowed, punched, and punched for about two minutes, but she knew this was happening to other children without anyone knowing. He said he wanted to make the footage public because he suspected that this was the case.
“You don’t know how bad it is until you see it,” she said.
“If he had to go through that, I think all anyone else can do is make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
