Kiarra Jones, a former paraprofessional for the school district, was eligible for a probation-only sentence, . Prosecutors argued for time in the Colorado Department of Corrections, and Arapahoe County District Court Judge Laqunya Baker-McKay agreed, according to the office.

Jones pleaded guilty in January to 10 counts of third-degree assault of an at-risk child, a felony, and two counts of misdemeanor child abuse, court records show. The plea deal, which dropped a felony count of child abuse from her case, was called “bittersweet” by the victims’ disappointed parents.

The three children hurt by Jones were students at the Joshua School in Englewood, which serves students on the autism spectrum. The Littleton Public Schools transportation department is contracted to bus students to the private school.

Jones was fired on March 19, 2024, after school district officials reviewed the recording of the previous day’s bus ride. That video showed Jones punching and elbowing a nonverbal boy with severe autism, who had been sitting calmly before the unprovoked assault.

Other videos slowly surfaced, but were not made public, of Jones assaulting other children on the bus, attorney Ciara Anderson of Rathod Mohamedbhai LLC previously told The Denver Post.

Anderson and her colleague, Qusair Mohamedbhai, are two attorneys representing the families in a civil lawsuit filed against the school, its leadership team and a teacher.

The school board voted unanimously to approve the settlement Thursday, slightly more than two weeks after former bus monitor Kiarra Jones pleaded guilty to abusing the three boys while they were riding the bus to and from The Joshua School, a private school in Englewood.

Littleton Public Schools was contracted to bus the students, who are nonverbal and autistic, to and from school each day. Jones abused the boys on their bus rides for about six months, between September 2023 and March 2024, before authorities discovered surveillance video that showed the woman elbowing, stomping and punching the students.

The boys’ parents frequently asked teachers and officials at The Joshua School about their sons’ unexplained bruises and injuries while the abuse was going on, but school officials claimed the children were injuring themselves.

The families have filed a lawsuit against The Joshua School, alleging that school officials mishandled their concerns and never reported suspicions of abuse to outside authorities, enabling the monitor’s abuse.

In a statement, attorneys from Denver law firm Rathod Mohamedbhai said the three families appreciate the school district’s willingness to resolve the case early to allow for the children to start healing.

“No parent should have to wonder if their children will come home from school hurt by the very people entrusted to care for them,” attorneys for the families said Thursday night.

Littleton Public Schools has changed policies around reviewing and retaining bus surveillance, according to the statement.

“The families continue to advocate for the rights of their children and for the dignity and rights of the Autism community as a whole,” attorneys for the three families said. “They continue to seek accountability and justice from everyone who played a role in not ending the abuse against their children sooner through their ongoing lawsuit against The Joshua School.”

Joshua School Executive Director Cindy Lystad previously issued a statement that put blame for the abuse on Littleton Public Schools and said the school stands by teachers and staff members.

School board members did not comment on the settlement before or after approving it Thursday night, but district officials posted a letter online from Superintendent Todd Lambert shortly after the vote.

The settlement will be “fully funded through insurance” and will have “no adverse impact on the educational services LPS students receive,” Lambert wrote.

“We will continue to look for ways to strengthen our practices, to communicate transparently with you, and to do everything in our power to ensure the safety, dignity and well-being of every student in our care,” he wrote.

Officials at The Joshua School, a school for children with autism and developmental disabilities, continually attributed three non-verbal autistic children’s injuries to self-harm in 2023 and 2024, even while they harbored doubt about that explanation, the parents alleged in the lawsuit filed Dec. 31.

The school’s inaction and incomplete investigation allowed Littleton Public Schools paraprofessional Kiarra Jones to continue to abuse the boys during bus rides for roughly six months before one mother took the investigation into her own hands, according to the complaint filed in Arapahoe County District Court against the school, four members of its leadership team and a teacher.

“By repeatedly sweeping it under the rug, not doing an inquiry into what actually happened and how these kids were coming to have bruises, scratches and marks on their bodies, it allowed the abuse to continue,” said Ciara Anderson, an attorney for the families. “That is exactly what mandated reporting laws are designed to prevent.”

The lawsuit faults the school for what it describes as a practice of investigating abuse suspicions internally, rather than reporting suspicions to outside authorities as required by Colorado’s mandated reporting laws.

Messages seeking comment from school officials were not returned Wednesday. On Thursday evening, Executive Director Cindy Lystad provided a statement that put blame for the abuse on Littleton Public Schools — the school district that was contracted to bus students to and from the school.

“We stand by our teachers and staff who have dedicated their lives to caring for and serving our students,” the statement read.

Educators are required to report any suspected abuse to police or child protective services within 24 hours.

The state’s mandated reporting law was reformed this year to clarify that professionals who suspect abuse cannot ask someone else to report on their behalf. While institutions like schools can create policies around how suspected abuse is handled, those policies cannot deter or impede employees from reporting their suspicions to outside authorities, the new law states.

The reforms were recommended by a task force that convened in response to the death of Olivia Gant, a 7-year-old girl who died in 2017 after her mother medically abused her at Children’s Hospital Colorado. In that case, some of the girl’s caregivers at the hospital suspected abuse but did not alert outside authorities before Olivia died, instead handling the investigation internally, a Denver Post investigation found.

“What we saw in bigger institutions — particularly child care settings, hospitals and schools — is that the institutions developed protocols and said, ‘When you observe child abuse and neglect, you just tell the principal and the principal will take it from there,’ and then it never gets called into the child abuse hotline,” said Stephanie Villafuerte, Colorado’s child protection ombudsman. “The new law is very clear that you cannot delegate your responsibility to report.”

Prior to the , the law was much more vague about delegation, institutional policies and the timeframe for reporting, Villafuerte noted.

Jones, the bus monitor, pleaded guilty this week to abusing the three boys while they were riding the bus to and from The Joshua School. She was hired in August 2023 and the first injury occurred in September 2023, according to the lawsuit.

The school documented a rise in unexplained injuries among the boys in the coming months, but did not thoroughly investigate the source of the injuries, the lawsuit alleges.

In January, one mother discovered bruises on her son’s thighs and questioned whether someone at the school caused the injuries. One teacher at the school noted in a message to a supervisor that the mother was “basically accusing us kindly of sexually abusing” the boy.

The supervisor, Director of Schools Sam Davis, asked where the teacher thought the bruises came from, and accepted the teacher’s suggestion that the boy had injured himself, even though no member of staff had filled out the required documentation of such a self-injury, according to messages included in the complaint.

A few days later, the mother discovered new bruises on her son’s arms and again alerted the teacher, who again brought the matter to Davis, who is named as a defendant in the lawsuit. The teacher told Davis that the injuries were “not really explainable” as self-harm.

“I mean, that’s definitely from someone grabbing him,” the teacher told Davis.

Three days later, after interviewing staff about the injuries, Joshua School officials reached out to Littleton Public Schools to investigate whether the student was injured during his bus ride. The school gave incorrect dates to the district, which resulted in the district reviewing bus surveillance footage from days that did not show abuse, the complaint alleges.

After that cursory investigation turned up nothing, school officials did little else to investigate the students’ injuries, even as the boys frequently received new unexplained injuries through February and March, the lawsuit alleges.

“The school investigated itself, determined, ‘We did nothing wrong, it must be someone else,’ but did nothing further,” Anderson said. “Whereas if it had been reported, child protective services or the police would have done a more thorough investigation.”

In March, after one boy returned home with significant new injuries, his mother called Littleton Public School officials directly — bypassing The Joshua School — and asked to review surveillance footage of the bus ride.

That footage showed Jones elbowing, stomping and punching the boy, and prompted the police investigation. Jones will be sentenced March 18.

Teachers and other mandatory reporters — the legal requirement to report applies to a wide range of professionals — do not need to have proof of abuse to bring forward their suspicions, Villafuerte said. If an injury does not match up with the explanation for the injury, that can be cause to report, she said.

The Sept. 1 changes to the mandatory reporting law have improved the process, she said. But it is important for professionals to understand their obligations, especially since Colorado does not require training for mandated reporters.

“Today I would say the law is in dramatically better shape than it was in the last 30 years,” she said. “…To me it is less about continuing to tweak the law at this time and more about educating… mandated reporters.”

Update: This story was updated Jan. 9 at 6:41 a.m. to include a statement from The Joshua School. 

Kiarra Jones, a former paraprofessional for the school district, shortly before 9 a.m. Monday to 10 counts of third-degree assault of an at-risk child, a felony, and two counts of misdemeanor child abuse, 18th Judicial District Attorney’s Office spokesperson Eric Ross said. The deal dropped one charge of felony child abuse from her case.

The last-minute plea deal canceled a jury trial scheduled to begin Monday in Arapahoe County District Court, court records show.

Jessica Vestal, the mother of the boy being beaten by Jones in the video, said the plea deal didn’t come out of the blue, but she was still disappointed when it happened.

“The spiteful part of me was looking forward to a trial because that was all we had … to put her on display,” Vestal said. “She didn’t just hurt our kids, she actively partook in lying to me to make sure she could hurt them for as long as possible.”

Vestal said Jones would proactively text her about her son’s injuries, shifting the blame to other staff members or the child himself.

Brittany Yarbrough, another victim’s mother, called the plea deal “bittersweet.”

Yarbrough said she had viewed the trial as a chance to give her son a voice and was disappointed she wouldn’t have that opportunity. But, she added, she was grateful the plea deal meant Jones couldn’t appeal the ruling and drag out the case for even longer.

“This won’t ever be over for my son and for my family,” Yarbrough said.

“This defendant was placed in a position of trust with defenseless children, and she clearly abused that responsibility,” District Attorney Amy Padden said. “Her actions are inexcusable. This resolution allows the victims and their families to move forward without the trauma of a trial, while still ensuring accountability.”

Teachers at Joshua School in Englewood, where the three children hurt by Jones attended, reached out to Yarbrough after the video of Jones hitting Vestal’s son surfaced. They said the incident was similar to when Yarbrough’s son had broken his foot earlier that year and no one could figure out why.

The Littleton Public Schools transportation department is contracted to bus the students to the private school, which serves students on the autism spectrum.

One of the felony assault charges that Jones pleaded guilty to names Yarbrough’s son as a victim, according to the plea deal document.

Eight felony assault charges and one misdemeanor child abuse charge named Vestal’s son, according to the document. One felony assault charge and one misdemeanor child abuse charge named a third victim.

Each of the felony counts Jones pleaded guilty to carries a maximum sentence of 18 months in prison, Ross said.

If she receives the maximum sentence for each of the 10 assault charges during her March 18th sentencing hearing, Jones could spend 15 years in prison.

“As a mom, nothing would ever be good enough, but, realistically, that’s the best case scenario for this,” Vestal said. “There’s not a prison sentence in the world that would make me and my heart feel that it’s good enough.”

Jones’ sentencing date falls on the second anniversary of the last time she abused Vestal’s son, marking a full circle moment for the case, Vestal said. The report Vestal filed the following day kicked off the chain of events that led to the criminal case.

Littleton Public Schools fired Jones on March 19, 2024, of the previous day’s bus ride, according to the school district.

The video showed Jones elbowing the boy in the stomach, punching him in the head and slamming his face into the bus window. The boy was sitting calmly at the time of the unprovoked assault.

That video was the only one made public, but attorney Ciara Anderson of said the investigation uncovered days of video of Jones abusing the children on the bus.

Anderson and her colleague, Qusair Mohamedbhai, are two attorneys representing the families in the pending civil case against Jones.

“Her conduct was beyond criminal,” Anderson said. “It was cruel, it was chilling, it was inhumane.”

The civil case, which has not been filed as of Monday, according to online court records, will focus not only on Jones, but on who put her in that position and allowed the abuse to go on as long as it did, Anderson said.

Vestal and Yarbrough both said their sons were diagnosed with PTSD after the abuse was discovered.

Her son’s triggers are varied and difficult to guess, Vestal said. It ranges from music that played in the background during the abuse to a shirt he may have worn during one of the incidents.

“Trauma is a fickle (expletive),” Yarbrough said. “And it’s all compounded by the fact that he can’t tell me what he’s scared of. … he couldn’t tell me about the monster sitting next to him on the school bus for months and months and months.”

This is a developing story and may be updated.

Lance Vieira was cited on suspicion of reckless endangerment during the Littleton Police Department����ap investigation into “alleged hazing” on the high school’s football team, Principal Thomas Velazquez wrote in an email to the school community Tuesday.

Viera’s citation was a result of the investigation but not related to the original assault allegation, Velazquez wrote.

Vieira is “no longer employed with the program” and Littleton police are still investigating the case.

The letter did not say when Vieira’s employment at the school district ended, and Littleton Public Schools officials could not be reached for comment late Tuesday night.

The investigation started in late August after someone submitted an anonymous tip, according to school officials.

This is a developing story and may be updated.

A letter, sent in mid-June to attorney Qusair Mohamedbhai, said the department was opening an investigation into whether the district and the school violated the Americans with Disabilities Act. Mohamedbhai is representing three families after a bus monitor allegedly physically assaulted their children.

The Department of Justice declined to comment. The federal investigation is separate from the families’ civil lawsuit and a criminal case against the bus monitor, Mohamedbhai said.

A video, captured on a bus ride home from the autism-focused Joshua School on March 18, appeared to show paraprofessional Kiarra Jones elbowing and hitting a boy who was sitting next to her, as well as slamming his head against the bus window. The boy, who is unable to speak, according to his mother, appeared to be sitting calmly at the time of the assault.

A parent had noticed unexplained bruises on their child about two months earlier and raised concerns he could have gotten them on the bus ride. The district and found nothing out of the ordinary.

Littleton Public Schools fired Jones following the March incident. The Joshua School is independent, but contracts with Littleton Public Schools for transportation.

Englewood Police arrested Jones, 29, in April. She faces nine counts of third-degree assault on an at-risk person, which is a felony, as well as three counts of misdemeanor child abuse. Police said video also showed her abusing the boy and another child on three other occasions.

Mohamedbhai alleged Jones also assaulted a third child, who hasn’t been included in the criminal case. All three no longer attend the Joshua School and have experienced regression in their behavior following the attack, he said.

“It’s very difficult to treat a nonverbal autistic child with this level of trauma,” he said.

The only problem?

The “gripping true crime story” of a Littleton real estate agent murdered by his stepson after they had a “secret gay love affair” is, by all appearances, complete fiction. The 25-minute video likely was created with, and narrated by, a generative artificial intelligence program.

“I’m not surprised to see this kind of thing,” said Casey Fiesler, an associate professor at the University of Colorado Boulder who researches and teaches technology ethics, internet law and policy and online communities.

Fiesler said she’s seen similar AI-generated content created to spread false conspiracies.

“True crime makes a ton of sense as a genre in the same way that conspiracy theories do because people watch this kind of content,” Fiesler said. “The motivation for it is money.”

The YouTube channel True Crime Case Files has been pumping out similar-looking and comparably themed “true crime” content for eight months, all relying on still photos rather than any actual news footage. On July 30, the channel posted a video about Richard Engelbert, a supposed real estate agent who was killed by his stepson, Harrison Engelbert, in a “grisly murder” in 2014.

According to the video, Harrison Engelbert was convicted of second-degree murder after a police investigation and jury trial, and sentenced to 25 years in prison without the possibility of parole. The community, the video says, was left “deeply shaken.”

Yet there’s no evidence any of this happened. The video’s narration says the case was subject to local and national media attention, but Google searches yield no coverage from 2014. Local law enforcement officials say they’ve found no records corresponding with the purported case. And the Colorado Department of Corrections lists no inmate named Harrison Engelbert.

Eric Ross, the media relations director for the 18th Judicial District Attorney’s Office, said the story appeared to be fabricated because none of the names popped up in a search of Colorado’s court records.

Sgt. Krista Schmit with the Littleton Police Department said the agency did not investigate the crime described in the video, and none of the names used in the segment are people the department has interacted with.

Yet comment after comment under the video features viewers expressing shock, outrage and disgust over the heinous nature of this bogus crime.

“The way that people believe something just because they see it on the internet is going to be increasingly a problem,” CU’s Fiesler said.

Fiesler estimated this one video could have easily generated tens of thousands of dollars for the creator, whose contact information is not listed.

When she watched the video, the AI red flags jumped out at her immediately.

The voice narration was off, she said. The photos of the people used in the video — all studio-like portraits — have an “uncanny valley” appearance, she said. Google’s reverse image searches of the photographs don’t turn up real results.

The facts in the video don’t add up, either.

For example, the stilted narration initially says the alleged murder happened on Bleak Street in Littleton — a street that does not exist in the town — but later refers to it as being on Oak Street. The narrator constantly changes the pronunciation of “Engelbert.” The video also says Richard Engelbert’s wife, Wendy Engelbert, was a school principal who had to drop out of her campaign to be “school superintendent,” which is not an elected position in Colorado.

The other names used in the video don’t come up in Google searches: District Attorney Laura Mitchell, Detective James Cattle, neighbor Luby Johnson-Guntz.

What Google searches do reveal are dozens of knock-off YouTube videos and TikToks and webpages summarizing the original fake video.

Creating misinformation is not new, but with the advent of AI-generated content, Fiesler said the technology levels the playing field for more people to make and spread false content.

“The thing that generative AI has done is sort of democratize these types of bad actors in the sense that the more people who are able to create this kind of content, the more of it we will see,” Fiesler said.

School leaders learned of the allegations through an anonymous tip Thursday and began investigating, Principal Thomas Velazquez wrote in a letter to football families that was shared with the wider school community.

The team’s Friday practice and dinner and Saturday scrimmage were canceled as a result, Velazquez wrote. School officials are fully cooperating with the police investigation.

Neither Velazquez nor Littleton Public Schools Superintendent Todd Lambert, who wrote the letter to the wider school community, provided further information about the nature of the allegations.

“We know you may have questions, but at this stage of the investigation we are not able to share more details,” Lambert wrote. “We will share additional information as appropriate.”

spokesperson Sheera Poelman confirmed the allegations were reported to a school resource officer but could not release further details because the case involves juveniles.

Kiarra Jones, 29, was arrested in April on a single charge of third-degree assault of an at-risk person, a low-level felony. On Wednesday, prosecutors with the 18th Judicial District Attorney’s Office moved to bring an additional 10 charges — related to two children — against Jones, including seven additional assault charges and two child abuse charges, according to a motion prosecutors filed with the court.

The new charges involve alleged abuse of the child originally named as a victim and a second child, 18th Judicial District Attorney John Kellner said.

Jones appeared in court Friday to face the charges. She was fired from her bus monitor job on March 19 and subsequently arrested after officials reviewed video from the prior day’s bus ride in which Jones elbowed a 10-year-old boy in the stomach, punched him in the head and slammed his head into a bus window.

The boy had been sitting quietly before the unprovoked attack. When Jones was arrested, investigators said there was evidence she also assaulted another child.

The boy’s mother noticed bruises on her son’s body and alerted authorities. Jones was released from jail on a $5,000 bond.

The names of the victims were redacted in court documents, but Qusair Mohamedbhai, a lawyer who represents the families of students who took the bus Jones worked on in, said they are both nonverbal autistic boys including the 10-year-old shown being hit in the video released by his mother.

Each of the new assault charges, which are felonies, represents a day in which there are multiple separate incidents of abuse against the children, Mohamedbhai said.

Jones’ arrest joins her with other Colorado school bus attendants who have been accused of abusing children with autism in recent years.

St. Vrain Valley School District bus assistant Monica Burke pleaded guilty in 2017 to kicking and spraying disinfectant in the face of a student with disabilities. Last year, Poudre School District paraprofessional Tyler Zanella was arrested after video showed him striking at least two students on the bus, .

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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(Embedded video provided by Rathod Mohamedbhai LLC Attorneys at Law)

A former Littleton Public Schools paraprofessional is facing a felony charge after police say video footage revealed she beat a non-verbal child with severe autism last month on a school bus that was transporting special-needs students.

Parents of children who rode that bus to and from the Joshua School in Englewood say they believe the abuse had been happening for months and that there are additional victims.

“I don’t want this to be something that’s hushed up,” Jessica Vestal, the boy’s mother, said of the video footage of the assault, which she made public through her attorney.

“I’m sure a lot of people would be like, ‘Why would you put this video of your kid out there?’ If you don’t look at it, the words don’t encompass it,” she added. “If he had to live through it, the least everybody else could do is pay attention to it so that it doesn’t happen again.”

Englewood police arrested Kiarra Jones, 29, on Friday and she has been charged with third-degree assault on an at-risk person, a Class 6 felony, according to the 18th Judicial District Attorney’s Office. She is due in court May 3 for a preliminary hearing.

Littleton Public Schools fired Jones on March 19 after the district and law enforcement officials reviewed video footage of the previous day’s bus ride, district officials confirmed. The mother of the victim had complained about bruises on her son.

Jones is out of police custody after posting $5,000 bail, according to the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office. She could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

“This kind of behavior cannot be and is not tolerated,” Littleton Public Schools Superintendent Todd Lambert wrote in an email to families who rode on the impacted bus. “As parents, you trust us with the well-being of your children and you should never have to worry about them being harmed when they are in our care.”

— provided by attorney Qusair Mohamedbhai,  who plans to represent impacted families in an upcoming lawsuit — shows a woman who Mohamedbhai identified as Jones sitting next to a 10-year-old boy on the school bus.

Vestal said she could only stomach watching two minutes and 25 seconds of her son being beaten before asking police detectives to turn the video off.

In the video, the child, who The Denver Post is not identifying, is sitting calmly when Jones, unprovoked, is seen elbowing the boy in the stomach, punching him in the head and slamming his head into the bus window. At times, Jones’ actions in the video are obstructed by a bus seat, but Vestal said Jones also stomped on her son’s feet and hit his legs.

Englewood police have surveillance footage of three dates this year that show Jones allegedly abusing the disabled boy, according to an arrest affidavit.

In court documents, police who watched the videos described Jones punching the child so hard that his head flung back to hit the seat. Investigators wrote that the boy began crying and pushing Jones away, but she continued her alleged assault. Police said it appears in the three videos that Jones also assaulted another child.

“I was just in disbelief”

On March 18, Vestal noticed bruising on her son’s foot and thigh. When Vestal contacted his school, the autism-focused Joshua School, officials there said her son did not have bruising when they put his shoes and socks on for dismissal.

The boy’s mother texted Jones asking whether anything happened on the bus. Vestal said Jones told her nothing happened, but that sometimes the boy sits on his foot.

Vestal said she was skeptical.

The mother contacted the Littleton Public Schools transportation department — which is contracted to bus students to and from the private school — and shared photos of the bruising, asking for an explanation.

The next day, Vestal said she was contacted by the school district and law enforcement, saying they had enough video footage to charge Jones with abuse.

“I was just in disbelief,” Vestal said.

Vestal said she and Jones were friendly. The mother bought Jones Christmas presents. Vestal made Jones tea when she wasn’t feeling well. The two texted on occasion.

The paraprofessional had texted Vestal earlier in the year saying her son had a visibly poor reaction to one of the staff members, who he pushed and ran away from, the boy’s mother said.

Then Vestal said her son came home from school covered in bruises.

“When he did come home and we saw those bruises, the seed had already been planted,” Vestal said.

She assumed the other staff member Jones named had caused them and had a meeting with the school, saying her son should not be around this staffer again.

Vestal noted it can be difficult to determine whether a severely autistic child is hurting themselves throughout the day, so she and other parents on Jones’s bus chalked up other injuries — bruises, black eyes, scratches — to accidental injuries.

Vestal has a record of 15 dates when her son came home from school injured. Police, she said, confirmed three of those dates coincide with video footage of Jones’s alleged abuse.

The Englewood Police Department’s investigation is ongoing.

Months earlier, Vestal had contacted the Joshua School, inquiring about bruises on her son’s arm, neck and thigh. Emails provided to The Denver Post show Littleton Public Schools employees talking about reviewing video footage from the bus to determine whether something happened there.

“We reviewed the video and there is nothing out of the ordinary that occurs during the ride home,” Michelle Molina, the Littleton district’s transportation operations supervisor, wrote in an email.

Now, Vestal and other parents question whether the school district was truthful.

Outside of releasing the superintendent’s letter to parents, Littleton Public Schools did not respond to questions about the allegations against Jones.

In a statement, Cindy Lystad, executive director of the Joshua School, confirmed that Littleton Public Schools officials said nothing was out of the ordinary in the video footage they reviewed.

Lystad said the Joshua School is “devastated about these terrible incidents involving the LPS employee. We share in our families’ outrage and disappointment upon learning of these abuse allegations against our students.”

Lystad stressed the Joshua School operates independently from Littleton Public Schools.

“The abuses of special needs children continue to occur because school districts treat this community as a burden rather than a blessing,” attorney Mohamedbhai said in a statement. “School districts routinely fail to train and support those who work with special needs student populations. Choices of where funding goes reveal value choices and school districts lack expertise and compassion to protect our most vulnerable student population.”

Other instances of Colorado school bus attendants accused of abusing children with autism have been reported in recent years.

St. Vrain Valley School District bus assistant Monica Burke pleaded guilty in 2017 to kicking and spraying disinfectant in the face of a student with disabilities. Last year, Poudre School District paraprofessional Tyler Zanella was arrested after video showed him striking at least two students on the bus, .

The Littleton Public Schools email to families said Jones was hired in August after “satisfactory reference checks and after passing a thorough background check.”

“She had very limited access to students during her employment with LPS,” the email said. “She has had no contact with students since March 19, the day her employment was terminated.”

The email confirmed police believe there may be at least one other victim.

“We’re going to question everyone forever”

Brittany Yarbrough, the mother of an 11-year-old severely autistic, non-verbal boy on Jones’s bus, is left to wonder whether injuries her son suffered since Jones’s hiring were of his own making or at the hands of an adult she trusted.

In September, Yarbrough took her son to the hospital after noticing an injury on his foot. His toe was broken, she said.

Yarbrough contacted the school, and nobody knew what happened, she said.

“He can’t tell us where it hurts and explain what he’s feeling,” Yarbrough said. “We thought, ‘Maybe he somehow hurt himself,’ and left it at that, which is so frustrating.”

Yarbrough is combing through other injuries her son endured throughout the year, wondering what really happened. She said police contacted her, saying they think her son may be a victim of Jones’s abuse.

She hasn’t seen video evidence yet as police continue to investigate.

“I feel betrayed,” Yarbrough said. “We fight so much with districts and schools and teachers to make sure the kids have everything with their IEP (individualized education program) they need and that it����ap being followed and that they have the right programming. I never considered the bus for a second because it seems so basic… We have this assumption they’re keeping our kids safe because that����ap their duty. Now I feel like we’re going to question everyone forever.”

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