A fight broke out on a Lewiston Middle School bus on October 2nd when two female students were caught on video allegedly attacking a student in the seat behind them, leaving the victim with a concussion, according to her mother.
“On October second, my daughter was riding the bus home and she was attacked by the two girls. You’ll see in this video. The bus driver never pulled over. He drove them back to school,” said Heather Swift.
Swift posted a video on X that she said was taken by another student on the bus and showed the attack on her daughter. In the video, Swift’s daughter can be seen talking with another student briefly before that student appears to strike her. The scene becomes chaotic after that, but it’s apparent that the unnamed aggressor continued to assault Swift’s daughter.
The video shows another student joining the fight on the side of the apparent instigator. It’s not clear who recorded the video or how it became public.
The grainy footage shows a third student intervening to break up the fight shortly before the recording ends.
The poor audio quality of the clip makes the argument between the students impossible to hear, although a significant amount of screaming can be heard.
Students seem to be shouting “get off” before the fight breaks up and the video ends.
School policy requires that the bus driver either pull over immediately and call the police, or return to the school and contact the school resource officer.
The bus driver chose to return to the school.
Swift told her story during a Lewiston Public School Committee meeting on Monday.
According to Swift’s testimony and her post online, her daughter went to the hospital after the fight and was diagnosed with a concussion.
She was forced to lie in pain in her bed in complete darkness from Wednesday to Sunday following the attack because the concussion made her extremely sensitive to light, Swift said.
Swift said that her daughter no longer feels safe riding the school bus with her attackers still there, but that the school refuses to ban them from the bus.
“I have asked you to remove the attackers that attacked my daughter from the school bus. She does not feel safe going to school. I have been told over and over this is their rights to attend, to go to school on this school bus. My daughter has rights too,” said Swift.
In her testimony to the school committee, Swift mentioned that the aggressors had been suspended for a few days, but the school provided her with no other specifics about the punishment.
Swift said that the school offered to make arrangements for her daughter to take a special van to and from school, so she would not need to ride the bus. However, she rejected the school’s offer because her daughter qualifies for a “504 plan” for students with disabilities, and Swift believed the van would cause too much turmoil in her daughter’s life.
Because the school has refused to remove the attackers from the bus, Swift has been forced to close her hairdressing business to drive her daughter to and from school.
Swift told The Maine Wire that she has lost $100 per day because of her reduced hours of work.
She hopes to push for a change in school policy so that violence on the bus results in an automatic ban on riding the bus in the future. She said her daughter did not know either of the attackers before the incident on the bus.
Swift said she is pressing criminal assault charges against the attackers, and they will appear in court on November 18. However, few details are available because both defendants are minors.
She has opened fundraising pages on both GiveSendGo and GoFundMe, asking for donations to cover her missed time from work, to pay for her daughter to switch to a private school, and to cover legal expenses so she can sue the school.
The Maine Wire also reached out to multiple Lewiston Middle School officials, asking for comments and further details on the story, but they did not respond to the requests for comment.
