A school aide has been fired after she was caught on camera ignoring a nonverbal special needs student who was being bullied while she looked for her phone instead.
The horrific footage shows students ganging up on five-year-old Anabelle Hunting, pulling her hair and slapping her in the face during a bus ride in Bradenton, Florida.
Meanwhile the bus attendant, 20-year-old D’Mari Martin, can be seen walking back and forth down the bus and demanding that the children tell her where her phone is.
‘Where is it? Where is my phone?’ Martin can be heard screaming at the students. ‘There is no phone in my pocket, where is my phone?’
School aide D’Mari Martin (pictured in green) was fired after she was caught on camera ignoring a nonverbal special needs student who was being bullied (pictured next to her)
The horrific footage shows students ganging up on five-year-old Anabelle Hunting, pulling her hair and slapping her in the face during a bus ride in Bradenton, Florida
Lauren Lardieri, Anabelle’s mother, said it took more than week for officials at Robert H Prine Elementary School to notify her of the incident.
Lauren Lardieri, Anabelle’s mom, said it took more than week for school officials to notify her of the incident
Lardieri said she had to pay the district $60 for a copy of the footage captured by a camera on the bus.
She then decided to share it with the public because she wanted to speak out for her daughter, who has ADHD, epilepsy, and mixed receptive-expressive language disorder, which causes Anabelle to have trouble expressing herself.
‘I just feel like I have to be the voice for my daughter, because she can’t express herself the way she wants to,’ Lardieri told the Bradenton Herald.
The disturbing footage shows Martin walking up and down the bus as other students throw Anabelle’s dolphin toy around.
One student can be seen getting up on her seat so she can pull on Anabelle’s hair.
Throughout the video Anabelle screams and cries while Martin just asks ‘Where’s my phone at?’ She is pictured here using another student’s phone to try and call her cell
Throughout the video Anabelle screams and cries as she gets picked on, while Martin repeatedly asks ‘Where is my phone?’
Anabelle’s screams prompted a number of other students on the bus to begin screaming as well.
But instead of trying to calm the bus down, Martin begins yelling herself as she screams: ‘Where’s my phone at? Where’s my phone?’
The student who pulled Anabelle’s hair continues to pick on her, sitting up in her seat to hit her in the face.
At one point Martin goes over to Anabelle, but does not comfort the girl. Instead she grabs her backpack to look inside, screaming once again ‘Where is my phone?’
One student repeatedly gets out of her seat to pull Anabelle’s hair and, at multiple points in the video, is seen hitting her in the face
Anabelle was often left alone to cry and scream as Martin went up and down the bus aisle to look for her phone
‘You all finna see a real ugly side of me if I don’t find my phone,’ she tells the students.
Anabelle continues to scream and cry as the bus comes to a stop and a group of students circle around her.
The student who had repeatedly picked on Anabelle through the ride then gets up and appears to hit her in the face four more times.
‘I couldn’t even watch the whole thing,’ Lardieri said. ‘It just made me sick to my stomach.’
Martin, who was hired two weeks before the video was filmed, said she felt overwhelmed as a first-time bus attendant.
‘I couldn’t even watch the whole thing,’ Lardieri said of the disturbing video. ‘It just made me sick to my stomach’
She said her frustration only grew when she lost her phone and she was unaware that Anabelle was being hit at the time.
Martin was fired a day after the bus ride, but it would be another week before Lardieri found out about the incident.
Lardieri (pictured) said she hopes the video will make parents more aware that ‘bullying happens all the time’
The district said there was a ‘miscommunication’ and that officials had thought ‘the parent had been informed of the incident’.
‘Once that miscommunication came to light, the parent was immediately notified,’ the statement added.
Lardieri said she was informed that the girl who hit Anabelle was a non-disabled student who was riding the bus with her sibling.
She said the student was suspended for the April incident and has since been allowed to ride the bus again.
The district refused to comment on the specific students involved or the ‘consequences to those students involved in the incident’.
Lardieri said she hopes the video will make parents more aware that ‘bullying happens all the time’.
‘The more people are aware of it and seeing it actually happens to kids, especially kids with special needs, I feel like parents would take more precaution and pay more attention to aides on the bus and the school district.’