![]() ![]() … Those children become professional manipulators, and you have to correct them. I had no idea what the hell was going on with this girl. If anything, it was abuse on the girl’s part. ![]() The driver added: “They’re portraying it as bus driver abuse and it’s bull. The second confrontation with the girl was his third day on the new route. He had been with the district for five years and was making roughly $15,000 annually in the position, according to documents from Alpine. He resigned his position on June 15, 2018, shortly after the second interaction with the girl during summer school. “I am who I am and I did what I did,” he added. That girl was totally out of control and I had to take control somehow.”īertagnole said maybe he should have called police or handled it differently, but said he was trying to protect the aide. “It’s unbelievable the lies they tell and how they’re portraying the situation. “They’re deleting that part of the video,” he said. He said the girl was ripping out the aide’s hair in clumps and pulling her head. But, spokeswoman Kimberly Bird added, “in matters of litigation, we would not likely be at liberty to discuss with the public.”īertagnole, when reached by The Salt Lake Tribune, said the video has been clipped to cut out what happened prior to his intervention. The school district emailed a written response, saying it has not yet been served with the lawsuit. “It’s child abuse,” said Aaron Kinikini, the legal director at the Disability Law Center, who is representing the family in the case. A different nearby aide says, “This is ridiculous.”Įach encounter lasts for a few minutes. As he tries to restrain the girl, he calls her “an ornery little cuss,” tells her to behave and punches the back of her head and her face. In a second video from Jfrom around 8 a.m., he similarly smacks her. “Can you behave? I need a ‘yes’ out of you.” He then hits her. Then Bertagnole charges back to intervene. She panics and hits the hand of one of the aides sitting by her. and shows Turner’s daughter sitting with other kids. The footage from the first incident is time stamped at 11:43 a.m. It is filed under seal with the court to protect the girl and others students’ identities. Their attorneys shared clips of the video they got from Alpine School District showing the two incidents. District Court, where the minor is not named. Greg Turner, the girl’s father, is representing her in the civil rights lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. Bertagnole, reached Thursday, said the video is misleading because it does not show what was happening before he stepped in. And, they allege, the driver was never trained to work with students with disabilities. They say there was at least one other incident where the man, Gary Bertagnole, targeted the girl. Her parents are now suing the school district, its superintendent, the special education director there and the driver for discrimination and abuse following the attack. The girl, 16, is a student at Horizon School in Saratoga Springs, which holds classes for those with special needs. ![]() “I don’t expect to wrestle with you every damn time,” the driver said, audible on the recording of the confrontation. The girl wailed out in pain and tried to push him away. ![]() Video surveillance shows him grabbing the girl by the wrists, bending them toward her shoulders, and turning her body hard into her seat, twisting her onto her stomach. And none of the nearby aides seemed to know what to do.Īs she cried for help, the bus driver pulled into the school parking lot and walked back to where she was sitting. On this particularly bumpy ride, though, in June 2018 - when a loud noise startled her - she began to panic. ![]()
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