Update: According to an official at the Westwind school division, Daniel “Bronc” Pilling resigned his position last week.
Brandi Morin
APTN National News
CARDSTON, Alta. — RCMP have charged an official with the Westwind school division with assaulting an 11 year old boy at the beginning of May on a school bus.
According to the mother from the Blood Tribe, on May 10 she received a text from her twins, a boy and girl, that the school bus they were in had broken down.
She said when she arrived to pick them up, her kids were crying and yelling to her that a man had hit her son.
“And I was like what, ‘Woah, what guy?’” said the mother who did not want her or her child to be identified. “And they (her children) point and getting off the bus is this big, burly man and I look and I say ‘You hit my son?’ and he nodded yes. I said, ‘Who the hell do you think you are? You can’t touch my son!’
According to the mother, her daughter said the boy had been jumping on the seats along with some other boys when the man, who was with the school division, walked to the back of the bus, allegedly pushed the boy forward and whacked the back of his head so hard that it hit the seat in front of him.
The mother told APTN National News she demanded answers from both the bus driver and the manager.
“By this time he’s gotten in front of me and the bus driver has joined us too, my kids are just hysterical, crying and they’re, you know, yelling at these men. I tried calming my kids. I looked at the guy who hit my son and I took a step towards him and I said ‘I’m going to have your job and I’m going to have you charged’ and the bus driver looked at me and said, ‘good luck with that,’” she said.
She called the police when she got home and after giving a statement, RCMP told her it would take a few days for an investigation to move forward. She wanted the manager charged with assault but was soon disappointed when she had been getting concerned not much was done by either the school board or the RCMP.
According Cardston RCMP, Daniel “Bronc” Pilling, 44, was charged Friday with assault. His first court appearance is July 25 in Cardston.
It is not clear Pilling’s position with the school board is, but police believe he is the supervisor of bus routes within the Westwind school division. APTN reached out to the school board prior to the charge being laid and in a written statement said that the board takes these complaints “seriously,” said the letter signed by Dexter Durfey, associate superintendent of the board.
The board could not be reached Tuesday for comment.
APTN reached out to Mr. Pilling but he was not available.
The mother said she is now driving her children to and from school because she believes their safety is still in danger with the same bus driver operating the bus.
She said she’s not shocked or surprised with the incident. Her children are First Nation and were the only First Nation children on the bus that day, and she believes they were targeted because of their race.
“I was raised around here and I experienced the physical abuse here in the schools as a child,” she said.
“The Mormon’s came up here fleeing persecution in the (United States), it was winter. My ancestors, the Blackfoot people helped them, saved them, and showed them how to survive. We welcomed them, told them they could stay, there was friendships formed. I guess they had dinners together, it’s an amazing story.
But somewhere down the line the goodwill between the neighbours fell apart.
In kindergarten she remembers being singled out, her and a handful of other Indigenous kids were brought out into the hallway and given the strap and told they were “stupid Indians”.
She said her daughter is affected by the incident showing signs of PTSD and her son has become angry with Pilling.
But she said she wants justice for her son sooner than later and then to move forward.
“I would like to see no other kids or mothers having to go through the same situation. I would like to start building bridges. Like, let’s start building some bridges of trust. We’re neighbours for goodness sakes, of over 100 years,” she said.
@songstress28
These stories need to keep being pointed out. When even our Indigenous allies don’t think Canadians are racist, or want to downplay all the incidents, then we have to keep showing them what is real life Canada. (Look up recent stories with former Prime Minister, Paul Martin, who continues to speak out for Indigenous issues, but still says Cdns not racist ).
My daghter took the school-provided shuttle from the elementary school in Fort Mac to the daycare down near the mall in the afternoons. A couple of times I got a call saying she’d never arrived, which scared me to pieces, she was only 7. I found out a couple of hours later that she’d been being driven around town on the shuttle for hours (assuming that story is true). It’s hard to believe nothing happened too, because my ex had a call to tow the guy and brought me and we had to share a seat and he groped me assaultively during that ride. And no one said anything about anyone being charged, although they did fire the guy after the third time. So I think it’s important to stay focused on the fact that the guy’s being charged, and figure out later what his deeper motivations were. If it was racism, that is on top of his behaviour because it was his behaviour that was chargeable, arrestable.