“Loving,” “happy” and “larger than life” are words three parents use when they describe their autistic sons.
The boys are non-speaking and use devices or other methods to communicate, including their behaviors, which showed stark changes in recent months, such as self-injuring moments and meltdowns.
The parents of Dax Vestal, Andrew McBride and Hunter Yarbrough share similar stories. They say their children began to act differently about six months ago and believe the shift is linked to how former Littleton Public Schools bus paraprofessional Kiarra Jones treated them as they rode to and from the Joshua School in Englewood.
Jones is facing 11 charges of child assault and abuse, with prosecutors alleging mistreatment of autistic children. Her arraignment is set for July 1.
The families told the Englewood Herald how they and their children are now coping with trauma as they watch the criminal case proceed amid ongoing questions about how Littleton Public Schools’ leadership has handled the situation.
A shift in behavior
Jessica Vestal describes her son, 10-year-old Dax, as an “affectionate, loving, smiling, giggling boy” who would always wake up in the best mood.
Dax rode Littleton Public Schools bus L76 with Jones to Joshua School, which teaches children with autism spectrum disorder and developmental disabilities.
A video from mid-March that appears to show Jones striking Dax went viral in early April. After her arrest on April 4, LPS released a letter to the district stating Jones was fired in mid-March. Englewood police charged Jones with a single child assault charge and recently added 10 more child assault and abuse charges.
Vestal said prior to Jones’ arrest, her family thought Dax was “entering a new phase of autism” because some different behaviors were emerging, such as “high severity meltdowns and self-injurious behaviors,” or SIBs.
“So when all of this started six months ago, we thought he was just kind of changing as a person,” Vestal said.
Dr. Amanda Kelly, president and CEO of FireFly Autism, a Denver facility that provides educational and other services to the autism community, said it’s hard to generalize behaviors because people and their experiences are different. At FireFly, there are also individuals who are non-speaking and when staffers notice students “displaying an exacerbation of current behaviors,” it can be an indicator that something is wrong.
“I think if there is consistent patterns of behavioral excesses – so, increases in either current behaviors or behaviors that have not been seen before – and a very qualified clinical team has done everything in their power to understand how and why these things are happening… and there’s no good explanation, then I do think that there is obviously thinking outside the box in terms of what else might be happening,” Kelly said.
Kelly pointed to a similar case involving a FireFly student who was abused on a St. Vrain Valley School District bus that contracted with FireFly in 2017. A bus paraprofessional and bus driver were convicted of second-degree assault of an at-risk person, third degree assault and failure to report abuse and exploitation of an at-risk person. The school district settled a nearly $4 million lawsuit filed by the victim’s family.
To help people understand how Dax communicates, Vestal compares his experience to a hypothetical situation involving her daughter, who can speak.
“If she was abused by a teacher she could tell me that, and if I wasn’t listening to her or I couldn’t hear her or something like that, she would keep having to tell me,” Vestal said. “With Dax, his severe behavioral change was his mode of communication, and so now that I’ve heard him and I’ve received the message, those behaviors have really (fallen) off.”
Blake McBride, father of Andrew, also 10-years-old, said his son is a movie buff who is “a quiet guy who loves to be around everybody.”
“When you see him, he’s got this infectious smile and he’s our world,” McBride said.
Similar to Dax, Andrew started displaying behaviors that didn’t align with his personality. Though he is doing better, he continues to struggle, McBride said.
“There’s more outbursts as far as his SIBs (self-injurious behaviors) are concerned,” McBride said. “He also tends to not take to anyone talking in our van…There’s more of these outbursts that he’s just mad.”
McBride said it’s difficult because Andrew can’t tell him what he’s experienced and no one else can provide that insight either.
Kevin Yarbrough is the father of 11-year-old Hunter Yarbrough, who also rode bus L76. He said Hunter is a “happy kid” who is “larger than life.”
“He loves to joke around,” Yarbrough said. “He loves to play around. He loves to be tickled – tries his best on his talker (a device he uses to communicate) to relay his emotions and tell you what he wants.”
The father of three said the family noticed changes in Hunter when he was riding the bus and after he stopped riding it.
“Hunter has self-injurious behaviors that had been over the last couple of years doing a lot better,” Yabrough said. “That was the first thing that we noticed is that the SIBs just escalated very very quickly. It happened around the time we were about to get on the bus.”
Yarbrough said Hunter is doing better now that he’s not taking the bus to school.
“Obviously we’d love for him to one day have the experience of riding the bus and getting that little freedom away from his parents, but it’s going to be a while before we can really do that or maybe even convince him to do that,” Yarbrough said.
Dax, Andrew, Hunter and other students on bus L76 were removed by their parents from the route in March after Vestal discovered Jones was allegedly harming Dax. That’s when the parents met with Joshua School, Vestal said.
The path to healing
Kelly, from FireFly Autism, said the best thing parents can do to help the healing process is to support their children, help them avoid certain triggers and connect them with resources.
“I think understanding the specific trauma that the person experienced is key and very crucial is getting help from a professional if you’re not sure how to handle that or what to do,” Kelly said.
Dax is still healing, but now that he’s been heard, he doesn’t need to communicate so fiercely, Vestal said.
“That hurt and that trauma is still there to process, but so much of that behavior has (fallen) off because we got the message and now he’s safe again,” Vestal said.
Overall, Dax is himself again, Vestal added, but feels he is at “square one in the healing process.”
Dax’s parents now drive him to Joshua School and he is back to enjoying his time there.
“He loves the school and he loves his routine there and everybody there has been great about babying him and catering to whatever he wants in the moment to let him know he’s safe and he doesn’t have to get back on the bus,” Vestal said.
McBride said the family drives Andrew to school and he seems to be more at ease.
“There’s smiles on his face when he sees me or mom picking him up from school or dropping him off,” McBride said. “It doesn’t seem so, for lack of a better word, traumatizing. So we’re still dealing with a lot of behavior that I think has a lot to do with what’s gone on in the past.”
McBride said he and his family are working to help Andrew heal with doctors and therapists and they hope going forward that he can find “peace and normalcy” again.
“I want him to feel like no matter what happens with this situation, he has parents that are out there fighting for him, and even though he can’t say what he wants to say right now, that his parents are there fighting for him everyday and we won’t go silently,” McBride said.
Hunter’s family is also helping him through the healing process with therapy and feel there’s been a “big shift since he’s been off the bus.” Yarbrough said he hopes Hunter will “trust going out into the world again.”
“We’d love to actually have him get back on a bus or we’d love to have him have something where he can feel like he has a little bit of independence,” Yarbrough said.
Next steps
The families are working with the Rathod | Mohamedbhai law firm, including during the criminal proceedings involving Jones. Lawyer Qusair Mohamedbhai said the firm has put the school district on notice about possible civil legal action.
Vestal feels LPS has not properly addressed the situation.
“A lot of times when things like this happen, there’s a criminal investigation, there’s a lawsuit and then it kind of fizzles out,” Vestal said, adding that she is determined to fight and believes the issue is systemic.
Vestal added that these types of cases aren’t exclusive to Colorado. There are similar investigations taking place in other states.
“So we are very determined to not let this have happened in vain and to make sure all of our kids and all kids like them that come behind us are safe on their bus,” Vestal said.
In a letter the district sent on April 5 to the “families of LPS students who ride bus L76 to the Joshua School,” and other parents in the district, LPS said Jones was hired in August 2023 “after satisfactory reference checks and after passing a thorough background check.”
“She had very limited access to students during her employment with LPS,” the letter continued. “She has had no contact with students since March 19, the day her employment was terminated.”
The parents said they have not been formally or directly contacted by the district since April 5.
McBride said the parents want to make a difference at a national level.
“As devastating as this whole situation is, this has gone on too long, and for this community to be so vulnerable and nobody to really pay attention to it, we need to get out there and put some safeguards in for these kiddos,” McBride said.
He said there needs to be more training for paraprofessionals and aides, better hiring practices, better cameras on the buses and a better review process of these situations.
“It doesn’t seem like what we’re asking for is too difficult to get going,” McBride said.
Kelly said in FireFly’s case, staffere were meticulous in collecting data and observing students when they got on and off a bus.
“Everybody just was really careful about making sure they kept really tight data on what was happening and then of course we were alerted by the police that there was an investigation that was launched,” Kelly said.
Kelly said she hopes this type of abuse and trauma isn’t common but this is the third case she has heard about in Colorado.
“I just don’t understand why this happens,” Kelly said. “This is the most vulnerable population that we have. So I have to believe that maybe it’s more common than we would allow ourselves to believe.”
McBride said he hopes for a world where people like Andrew are safe everywhere.
“It’s more than just the buses and how they’re getting there,” McBride said. “We need to make sure that as their parents things are going the way that they should be going.”
Yarbrough also hopes for change and for people to really understand how challenging all of this is.
“Most parents see this and realize it’s heartbreaking and realize they wouldn’t want this to happen to their kid, but most of the parents and their kid would be able to tell them if something happened on the school bus,” Yarbrough said. “We’re trying to learn through behaviors of what actually happened and having to try and read feelings.”