Former PSD bus attendant sentenced to 12 1/2 years for assault, abuse of at-risk students

A former Poudre School District bus attendant was sentenced Friday to 12½ years in jail by 8th Judicial District Judge Daniel M. McDonald for physically and verbally assaulting and harassing 11 children while performing his duties on a bus serving students with special needs.

Tyler Zanella, 37, had previously accepted a plea deal in the case, pleading guilty to one count involving each of the 11 children. He originally faced 163 charges, including 37 felony counts of assault against an at-risk individual, for actions that took place on one or more PSD school buses in March, April and May of 2023.

He was arrested May 24 after PSD officials, following up on a parent’s complaint, reviewed video surveillance from a bus and saw Zanella hitting an autistic nonverbal child. Additional investigation and review of video surveillance by school district staff and Fort Collins police revealed additional victims, primarily autistic children with little or no verbal abilities, which led to more charges.

Acknowledging that he had watched a video compilation of every incidence of abuse that was captured by the bus surveillance camera, the judge said he was imposing the maximum sentence available for those 11 charges — seven counts of assault knowingly or recklessly causing bodily injury to an at-risk individual, a Class 3 felony; two counts of child abuse knowingly or recklessly causing bodily injury, a Class 1 misdemeanor; and two counts of harassment by striking, shoving or kicking, also a Class 1 misdemeanor.

“To be clear, justice will not be served today; there’s no such thing as justice in a situation like this,” McDonald said. “And I don’t say this lightly, but what Mr. Zanella deserves, this court is not suited to impose.”

The maximum sentence on the felony assault charges is 18 months in a state prison, and McDonald ordered those to be served consecutively for a total of 10½ years. The maximum sentence on the misdemeanor charges was six months apiece, and Colorado law limits the total jail sentence for misdemeanors to a maximum of two years. So, Zanella was ordered to serve two years in the Larimer County Jail, minus credit for 33 days already served, before he is sent to state prison to serve his sentence for the felonies.

He was also ordered to have no contact with children under the age of 18, including his own child and stepchild, a condition defense attorney Andy Gavaldon said he would appeal.

Zanella, handcuffed and wearing a tan jail uniform, sat quietly with his head down at the defense table throughout the hearing at the Larimer County Justice Center that lasted more than 2½ hours.

Before issuing the sentence, the judge listened to victim-impact statements from 12 people, many of them noting that the children he assaulted and their families will be dealing with the effects of his actions long after he completes his sentence. Several parents suggested Zanella could be free in seven years if he meets various criteria for early release.

“My family will never be the same,” said Keri Innis, the mother of three victims. "… Tyler’s actions of choosing to intentionally and repeatedly hit my children has caused my family limitless grief. … I hope after sentencing today, we will be able to begin the healing process. However, it does feel insurmountable and yet another punishment for actions that were not our own.”

Priscilla Muller, the mother of another victim, said she watched eight videos of Zanella harming her son that were all recorded within a four-week window last spring.

“I saw with my own eyes how he hit him on the head multiple times, punched him in the arms and called him a little f---,” she told the judge. “He asked (her child), ‘What are you going to do about it?’ knowing he couldn’t talk. Are you going to tell your mom?

“This is only in one month that Tyler was on the bus with my kid. If they had seven months of video, there’d be seven times as many charges.”

One parent, William Haire, who said he has autism, turned to his right and began speaking directly to Zanella, who was seated about 6 feet away, while raising his voice. Gavaldon, who was seated between them, quickly jumped out of his seat to object as three Larimer County sherriff’s officers in the courtroom closed in to intervene, if needed. After a brief admonishment from the judge, reminding Herrick to direct his comments to the front of the courtroom, Herrick was allowed to complete his statement.

Laura Hinojos, the special victims chief prosecutor with the 8th Judicial District Attorney’s Office, told the judge that complaints about Zanella’s behavior on the bus began with in October 2023 with an allegation that he had pulled a girl’s hair, and another assault was reported around Thanksgiving of that year involving the same girl. Those were not captured on video, she said, and no action was taken by the school district against Zanella at the time.

“He hit, flicked, pinched, cursed at, pulled the hair of and punched 11 children that we are aware of,” Hinojos said, noting that the majority of the children — all between the ages of 5 and 10 — were autistic and nonverbal. “… I am not, and I know that Your Honor is not naïve enough to believe the multitude of these offenses captured on video is not the only time this abuse occurred.”

Hinojos called Zanella’s actions “intentional, mean-spirited, cruel and just plain sadistic,” while urging the judge to impose the maximum sentence possible based on the plea agreement that Zanella had accepted Jan. 29.

With 11 victims, she said, there was a lot of input provided to the DA’s office. She knows not all victims’ families, as some said in court Friday, agreed with the decision to accept a plea deal.

"We, as a community, expect and trust those caring for our children to be held to the highest standards, and Mr. Zanella violated that trust and victimized some of the most vulnerable members of our community," District Attorney Gordon McLaughlin, who was in the gallery during the hearing, said in a statement afterward. "I'm glad we were able to resolve this case to bring closure for the community without unnecessarily subjecting the victims to the additional trauma a trial would cause."

Hinojos went on to tell the judge that Zanella has shown no remorse for his actions or respect for the court, twice violating the terms of his bond and even committing another crime that resulted in misdemeanor charges of theft and tampering, since his initial arrest.

“Our intent was to resolve this case as quickly as we could,” Gavaldon said, noting the presence of victims’ families at each of Zanella’s previous 12 court hearings since his arrest.

“Every time we’ve headed to court, we’ve re-traumatized these people,” Gavaldon said.

That’s why he was not putting anybody in front of the court to speak on his client’s behalf and why he advised Zanella to avoid making a statement, too. He didn’t push for the minimum sentence on the charges either, instead asking the judge to sentence his client based on his actions alone and in line with the sentences handed down to others in his courtroom rather than imposing a harsher sentence to make the kind of statement about the treatment of children with autism that some parents had pushed for.

“He’s still a human being,” Gavaldon said. “Human beings make terrible mistakes in life, even worse than his. He still has an opportunity to have a life. He’s married, he has a daughter, he has a stepchild.”

McDonald wasn’t swayed, calling Zanella’s actions “horrific,” “sadistic” and “100% malicious.”

“What you did was a choice, over and over and over again, days on end, to put these children through absolutely unimaginable torment,” the judge told the defendant. “I don’t know if Mr. Zanella’s redeemable or not, but I don’t see any evidence that he is. I see no evidence that he can be rehabilitated. I think the only thing I can do to protect society is to remove Mr. Zanella from it for as long as I can.”

The judge also chastised PSD for hiring Zanella in the first place, knowing that he had previously pleaded guilty to child abuse in a 2012 case in Adams County.

“I have no idea who needs to hear this, I have no idea if they are in this room or not, but you don’t hire someone with a conviction of child abuse to be a paraprofessional to work with kids,” he said.

PSD Superintendent Brian Kingsley and the district’s chief information officer, Madeline Novey, were in the courtroom at the time. PSD had previously claimed state law prevented it from holding that previous conviction against Zanella in the hiring process.

The school district has since revised its hiring practices "to mitigate the risk of this ever happening again," Kingsley said at an Aug. 10 meeting of the Board of Education.

In a statement issued after Friday's hearing, PSD said: "A year ago, our community was shaken by the actions of a former employee. First and foremost, we want to express our deepest sympathies to the victims and their families.

"A decisive ruling was made today.

"We want to be clear: our priority is our students.  We have implemented additional measures to ensure our district is a safe haven for learning and growth. The district's human resources protocol prohibits the hiring of individuals with any conviction related to child abuse or neglect.

"We know that trust has been broken. We are dedicated to earning your trust back."

Reporter Kelly Lyell covers education, breaking news, some sports and other topics of interest for the Coloradoan. Contact him at kellylyell@coloradoan.com, x.com/KellyLyell and  facebook.com/KellyLyell.news. 

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Fort Collins school bus attendant gets maximum sentence: 12.5 years