Trial underway against bus aide after 6-year-old passenger with special needs suffocated and died
SOMERVILLE, New Jersey (WABC) -- A trial is underway in New Jersey against a school bus aide after a 6-year-old passenger in a wheelchair was strangled by her harness and died.
"It's hard to relive everything all over, although I've been still reliving it every day since, but I've got to do what I got to do," Farj Williams' mother Najmah Nash said.
On the second day of the trial Wednesday, jurors heard from experts in mobile device forensics as prosecutors aimed to show what bus aide Amanda Davila was doing on the bus while Williams was suffocating in her wheelchair.
The shoulder strap securing Williams' chair to the bus tightened against her throat after she slipped in her chair. Video from the bus showed Davila sitting in front of the child with ear buds in both ears.
Prosecution experts say she was on social media sites and texting acquaintances.
Earlier testimony from Montauk School Bus Company showed Davila had attended required safety training several times a year with special training on children who use wheelchairs.
They say she was given safety manuals warning of zero tolerance for using electronic devices while monitoring children.
When the bus arrived at Claremont Elementary School, a nurse there tried desperately to revive the child who was rushed to the hospital.
Experts read what they say Davila was texting after the tragedy:
"I'm sorry I was in the police station, this little girl in a wheelchair choked on the harness connected to her wheelchair and she wasn't breathing, I'm shaking and crying."
The other person asked if the child was OK.
"She went to the hospital and they got a heartbeat but I'm honestly traumatized, I feel so bad, I feel like it was my fault," the expert read as her response.
Williams died at the hospital.
Davila's attorney maintains that Williams' family bears some burden as well, but that no one should be held criminally responsible.
"But for the mom who delegated it to the 14-year-old daughter on that morning to buckle in the safety harness, which is in the wheelchair, which would have prevented the poor young victim from sliding down and strangulating," said defense attorney Michael Policastro.
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