Canandaigua, N.Y. - Johanna Dunkel says she wants to tell her side of the story.Dunkel says two weeks ago her nine-year-old son came home crying because he says the bus driver lashed out at him.
Ontario County Sheriff’s deputies say 47-year-old Susan Mantz, a bus driver for the Marcus Whitman School District, was parked outside of the high school on June 8 when one of the students on the bus became disruptive.
To keep him quiet, Mantz allegedly put her hand over the student’s mouth.
Dunkel says the school allowed her to see the school bus video.
She describes to 13WHAM what she saw and she says it was much more than a bus driver putting their hands over her son's mouth.
“She pounced on him and placed her hands very hard over his mouth, the other hand behind his head and was leaning him back in his seat and was literally screaming at him for a good 10 to 15 seconds,” Dunkel said.
Dunkel says she could hear the bus driver telling her son that he needed to shut his mouth, sit still and that she was sick of him.
This news is coming out in light of the incident with a Greece school bus monitor.
Dunkel says she wants to clear up some misconceptions about her and her son.
She says she's seen hundreds of messages on Facebook of people comparing her son to the boys in the Greece incident.
Dunkel says that couldn't be farther from the truth.
“That situation, those children were out of line and were bullies and I believe they should be disciplined for that behavior,” Dunkel said. “In this case Susan Mantz was the bully and in this case my son was the victim.”
“My son is only a nine-year-old child and everyone's assuming he's, since it said in the article this was a high school run that he's some high school teenage bully who's out of control,” Dunkel said. “I've been a good mother and he's a wonderful child. He's very sweet and outgoing and caring.”
Dunkel says she wants that bus driver removed and shouldn’t be working with children.
13WHAM reached out to the Marcus Whitman School District.
They declined an interview but did tell us the bus driver is on paid leave.
