Colorado school bus driver facing 30 misdemeanors after brake-checking students for not sitting down

A substitute school bus driver in Colorado faces 30 counts of misdemeanor child abuse for allegedly slamming on his vehicle’s brakes to give his young passengers a violent lesson in road safety.

The incident was caught on video that shows the 61-year-old driver, Brian Fitzgerald, warning the children to sit down before he brake-checked them and forced many to slam into the seats in front of them.

“You guys need to be in your seats,” Fitzgerald can be heard saying in the video, obtained by CBS News Colorado.

“You guys want to see how dangerous that is?” he says just a few moments later, hitting the brakes suddenly. “Do you get that? That’s why you need to be in your seats. Turn around and sit down properly.”

After an internal investigation launched by the Douglas County, Colo. school district, Fitzgerald faces one charge of child abuse for each of the children who were on the bus.

Fitzgerald’s passengers ranged in age from kindergarten to sixth grade. The video shows them reacting in shock after the abrupt stop. One even appears to immediately take out a cell phone to call their parents.

“It really made my stomach turn,” said Lauren Thomason, whose fourth-grade child was on the bus. Thomason said her child came home visibly upset.

“He was shaking, in tears, hysterical,” she told a reporter. “He just said the bus driver, the bus driver, he hit the brakes and I hit my head and my buddy he’s bleeding.”

Fitzgerald, who was hired in the fall and his minimal school-bus driving experience, reportedly apologized to his supervisors after he was fired.

The school district referred to his behavior as “unnacceptable.”