Background: The intersection of East Hills Drive and Wilner Drive in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (Google Maps). Inset: A person alleged to be Tanelle Day attacking a school bus driver (WPXI).
A Pennsylvania woman is accused of beating up a school bus driver because the driver was 5 minutes late to pick up the woman”s daughter from the bus stop, authorities say.
Tanelle Day, 31, stands charged with aggravated assault, disorderly conduct, and unauthorized school bus entry, court records reviewed by Law&Crime show. The incident occurred on Jan. 15.
The bus driver, Shayla Harris, was picking up students on her Propel Braddock Hills bus route that snowy morning, Pittsburgh NBC affiliate WPXI reported. As the bus rolled to a stop at East Hills Drive and Wilner Drive in the city, Day allegedly pulled open the bus doors, spilled her coffee, and began to attack the bus driver.
Surveillance footage taken from inside the bus and obtained by the local outlet shows the suspect get in the face of the driver and bat away her arm as Harris tries to defend herself. The woman in the video proceeds to punch Harris multiple times with one arm while holding onto the victim’s hair with her other arm.
“It’s the everyday life of a bus driver,” Harris told the TV station. “Parents are just crazy.”
Day reportedly made her reasoning for the attack clear. “She said I had her baby standing out in the cold,” Harris said, adding that as she saw the suspect ripping the doors open, she “was struggling to pull the brake” to stop the bus.
“What was going through my mind was to secure the bus, so that we didn’t drive into anything… to get her off the bus,” Harris told WPXI. “Everybody could have lost their lives that day because I was 5 minutes late. Very traumatizing. Most of the parents I’ve spoken with were very upset that this happened.”
In the video, a small figure wearing a pink backpack and whose face is blurred can be seen walking on the bus at the same time as the suspect, suggesting Day’s daughter witnessed the attack. Other children were apparently on board, including Harris’ son, who woke up from a nap to hear his mother’s screams, jumped on the suspect’s back and, with the help of two adults, got her off the bus.
Harris was reportedly treated for a concussion at a nearby hospital. She took a week to recover and was placed on a different bus route. Court records do not list an arrest date for Day, though a criminal complaint was filed against her on Monday.
Propel Braddock Hills is part of the Propel Schools network, which describes itself on its website as “a not-for-profit federation of charter schools dedicated to the mission of catalyzing the transformation of public education so that all children have access to high-performing public schools.”
Law&Crime reached out to Pittsburgh Public Schools for more information about the investigation.
