ONLY ON WWAY: Parents claim children assaulted on school bus

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — Concerned parents are speaking out against incidents that occurred on what they once thought was a safe ride for their children to take to and from school.

“When she came off the bus she was crying and running towards me, and when I got out of the car she said, ‘I don’t want to ride the bus anymore. She wouldn’t stop hitting me,'” Megan Webber said about her daughter.

Webber is a parent of one of the children who claims she was hit. Webber said she just wants answers for what happened. Webber said her first grader came home Monday upset about what happened on a New Hanover County school bus.

Webber’s daughter was not the only child hit by another student.

“He has a red mark and bruises and the right side of his face was pretty swollen and the left side had marks,” Jessica Carroll, another mother, said. “The back of his head had a bump on it, but I’m not sure if he was knocked into something.”

When Webber and Carroll went to the Wrightsboro Elementary School to find out what happened they were told that there was no video from the bus, because the hard drive for the camera had been stolen.

New Hanover County School’s Assistant Superintendent Rick Holliday said that each case is being investigated. He also said that the cameras have been missing since February and were just replaced this week after the incidents occurred.

“Over the past couple years we’ve had cameras on all of our buses. There was a problem with the camera on this bus, but we have cameras on the buses, and that has helped tremendously,” Dr. Holliday said.

Holliday chalks it up to misbehavior, but that is not enough for the parents.

“I just don’t want this to happen to any other kids,” Webber said. “I want it to stop and it not to escalate any further then it already did.”

Both Webber and Carroll say their children have not ridden the bus since Monday.