Ex-Littleton bus aide sentenced in abuse case involving nonverbal student
A video caught a Littleton school bus aide striking a nonverbal student in 2024 — and now she’s headed to prison for more than four years after pleading guilty to 10 child abuse charges.
Arapahoe County District Judge Laqunya Latrese Baker-McKay sentenced 29-year-old Kiarra Jones to four-and-a-half years in prison last week after she pleaded guilty to 10 felony counts for abusing at-risk children and two misdemeanor counts of child abuse in January, according to a social media post by the 18th Judicial District Attorney’s Office.
“I often painstakingly ponder what could cause a person to behave this way, to do something so hideous to someone so beautiful and innocent,” said the father of one of the victims at the sentencing hearing, according to The Denver Gazette’s news partner, 9NEWS.
The case stemmed from the abuse of three non-verbal autistic children in Littleton Public Schools between 2023 and 2024.
Jones began working on a bus route for The Joshua School, a school for students with autism and severe disabilities, in August 2023. In September, three students began showing “unexplained behavior changes and physical injuries, including a fractured bone, limping, unexplained scratches, a lost tooth, a black eye and deep bruises on their bodies and feet,” according to a news release from Rathod Mohamedbhai, the law firm representing the parents.
The mother of 10-year-old Dax Vestal requested a surveillance video review on March 18, 2024, leading to Littleton Public Schools officials reviewing footage between February and March and seeing Jones repeatedly hitting children. Jones was arrested in April that year.
Jones was initially charged with 13 counts. She pleaded guilty in January, with the plea agreement dropping one of the charges. She faced a maximum of seven years in prison and a minimum of probation.
Judge Baker noted the videos of her assaulting special needs students on a school bus were “gut-wrenching” and agreed that prison time was appropriate, according to the news release.
Ultimately, she received four-and-a-half years, despite many of the parents pleading for the full sentence.
“The person who struck my son viciously — carefully timed to the beat of the music playing — is not someone who goes home at night and asks herself, why is she this way,” one father said.
Jones did not speak, but wrote a letter that said she had “deep remorse for my actions.”