Man charged after assaulting autistic boy

NEAR FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (WSVN) -- Deputies have arrested a school bus aid after he assaulted an autistic boy who was unable to defend himself.

Forty-eight-year-old Darryl Blue, a Broward County school bus aid, has been charged with aggravated child abuse. According to detectives, Blue brutally choked a 13-year-old autistic boy while dropping off students who attend a Parkland school.

Detectives said the school bus surveillance captured Blue committing the crime. "He not only looks like he's in pain, but he's expressing himself, and he's screaming out. He's yelling out. He's telling the attendant, 'You are hurting me, you're choking me,' said Broward Sheriff's Office spokesperson Veda Coleman-Wright.

Coleman-Wright said the choking started after the boy urinated on himself. The boy was in a harness, and, she said, Blue used the harness to choke him. "You can see in the video where he's pulling on this harness, and he's twisting it, and the child is screaming out, 'You're hurting me, you're choking me,'" said Coleman-Wright.

Deputies said, when the boy made it home, his mother saw the bruises around his neck and called the Sheriff's Office. "He has like a dent here and bruises around his neck," said the boy's mother, Bertis Paulino. "No one has the right to touch my kid or any kid," she said.

According to the arrest report, the boy was still scared when he was interviewed by a detective. The boy told a detective, "Don't let him hurt me."

The school district has no longer allowed Blue to work with children as the criminal investigation continues.

The mother of the boy said, ever since the abuse occurred, her son has never been the same, and is afraid of strangers. "Yesterday, he didn’t want to go to school, and when the bus came, he said, 'I don’t want to go in there,'" said Paulino.

Detectives plan to release the surveillance video later on Friday. Blue has been suspended from his job as a Broward County school bus aid pending the outcome of the police investigation.

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