A Florida school bus driver too scared to physically intervene in a fight that occurred on his bus in July, leaving a 13-year-old student with two black eyes and a broken arm, will not be charged with child neglect, since he radioed for help.
Cellphone videos and surveillance footage of the July 9 fight in Pinellas County, Fla. shows three 15-year-old Black students punching and kicking a 13-year-old White student while riding the bus. Troubling for some was that no one attempted to physically intervene, including the 64-year-old bus driver John Moody.
A bus driver for the Pinellas School District for the past 17 years, Moody says he followed school policy, which required him to stop the bus and call dispatchers for help and added he was “in shock” and “petrified” during the incident.
“Me jumping in the middle of that fight with three boys, it would have been more dangerous for other students on the bus and for myself,” he said. “There’s just no telling what might have happened.”
School policy dictates that while a bus driver must radio for help, he or she can step in if they feel it’s safe to do so. Bus drivers are required to undergo training, but a majority of the training involves driving rules and regulations, not how to handle a violent fight on the bus. While drivers are offered training on first aid and child abuse, the classes don’t prepare drivers for an incident like the one Moody experienced.
Instead of learning how to safely break up violent fights such as this one, bus drivers are often taking classes on how to understand the air brakes, how to avoid driver fatigue, tips for driving in inclement weather, how to recognize and report terroristic threats and safely handle aggressive drivers.
Though the exact number of school bus fights that occur each year in the U.S. is not known, as incidents that occur on the bus are grouped with violent crimes and theft that occur on school property and in the school building itself, a report from the National Center for Education Statistics found that during the 2009 and 2010 school year, 85 percent of public schools reported incidents of violence, theft or other crimes. In total there were an estimated 1.9 million crimes in the 2009–2010 school year.
In the video footage, Moody can be heard on the radio calling for help saying, “You gotta get somebody here quick, quick, quick, quick. They’re about to beat this boy to death over here.
“Please get somebody here quick. They’re still doing it,” he adds. “There’s nothing I can do.”
But not everyone thinks Moody did all he could. In response to the incident, Gulfport Police Chief Robert Vincent told a local news outlet that Moody should have physically intervened, adding “There was clearly an opportunity for him to intervene and or check on the welfare of the children or the child in this case, and he didn’t make any effort to do so.”
But Chief Assistant State Attorney Bruce Bartlett disagreed, and said there were no grounds to bring charges against Moody.
“It wasn’t like he was looking out the window cleaning his fingernails or something like that,” he said.
According to a local Florida news station, the fight started after the three 15-year-olds reportedly asked the 13-year-old if he wanted to buy drugs while in the bathroom earlier that day at school. The boy declined and told school officials on the other three boys.
When they all ended up riding home on the same bus, a fight broke out, and the 13-year-old was trapped on the floor between the bus seats while the three 15-year-old boys punched and kicked him relentlessly.
Once the bus was stopped the 15-year-old boys ran out, and Moody says he would have helped give first aid to the 13-year-old victim if the boy hadn’t “skedaddled” out the door.
Since the fight, all three of the 15-year-olds have been arrested and were charged with aggravated assault.
The school district also launched an internal investigation, which was eventually turned over to the state attorney’s office. But last week prosecutors announced that Moody’s actions were not indicative of child neglect and they would not be charging him with any crime.
Moody has also since retired, saying the fight was “the final straw — and it was a big straw, too.”
He told CNN that watching the video footage of the fight was “like a bad dream” and that he took the incident really personally. “I had many sleepless nights,” he said, “I had nightmares.”
Moody’s lawyer, Frank McDermott, said complaints Moody didn’t do enough are unfair and said the school administrators should have focused more on the administrators’ actions.
“School officials let these two boys back on the bus, or let them on the bus, and Mr. Moody had no idea what had happened at the school,” McDermott said.