A young girl with a disability tragically died in an accident on a bus while her aide was preoccupied with her phone.
6-year-old Fajr Williams from New Jersey died on Monday after choking on a harness used to secure her wheelchair while riding a school bus.
According to the reports, the bus was traveling through Somerset County when it hit a road bump causing the harness to tighten around the girl’s chest and neck and choked her to death.
While the shocking incident was unfolding, 27-year-old bus attendant Amanda Davila, who was tasked with looking after Fajr, was allegedly busy playing with her phone and using earphones.
Charging the aide with second-degree manslaughter, the police insisted that Davila ignored the fact that the bus hit a series of road bumps while paying no attention to her surroundings.
“She didn’t have oxygen in her brain for almost 40 minutes. Do you understand the image that we got in our head of our daughter the last time that we seen her? What we had to go through?” the girl’s grieving dad, Wali Williams, said in an emotional interview with NBC 4.
Speaking out was also the girl’s mother who called Davila’s actions “hurtful” and “distasteful.”
“It was very hurtful. It was very distasteful,” Namjah Nash Williams told The New York Times.
In an interview with NBC 4, the devastated mom also remembered her daughter as the “sweetest kid” with the “sweetest little laugh.”
“She was the sweetest kid you’ll ever meet. She had the sweetest little laugh, little dimples and she just endured so much in her six years,” she said.
“To be taken away from us in such a way that had nothing to do with her condition…”
Our thoughts remain with Fajr’s loved ones during this challenging time.