Wilton Bus Driver Accused of Calling Student ‘Cry Baby’ Pleads Not Guilty

In early June, Pedro Garcia-Sarvia, a First Student elementary school bus driver who worked bus route six from , was arrested for verbally  over the course of several months. 

Charges state that Garcia-Sarvia, 44, of Stamford, had been harassing a child student for crying on the bus that the accused drove. Tuesday at , he pleaded not guilty to both disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor, and risk of injury to a child, a felony. 

The court warrant states that Mary Channing, the transportation coordinator for Wilton Public Schools, reviewed video evidence which had  recorded “disturbing behavior.”

Video surveillance footage

According to the warrant, bus surveillance video recorded on May 5 at 3:47 p.m., shows Garcia-Sarvia walking along the inside of the bus, telling students to put their seat belts on. When the accused gets to the student and alleged victim of harassment, he “taps him on the head a couple of times and says ‘crying boy seatbelt.’ ”

The warrant says that while the accused continues driving he continues banter with the children, until about 13 minutes after driving, one student says that the victim “is crying.”  The victim states he is not crying and ”proceeds to spell happy as ‘h-a-p-y.’” Garcia-Sarvia responds, “‘How do you spell cry?” Prompting other students to respond, ‘”c-r-y.”  Garcia-Sarvia then asks, “’How do you spell I am?’” and then “tells [the victim] to put it together,” prompting several students to respond with “I am crying,” according to the warrant. Garcia-Sarvia then “laughs throughout the exchange” and “has the kids add every day so that they are now saying ‘I am crying every day.’ Several kids at the same time begin chanting ‘I am crying every day,” the warrant states. 

As the bus comes to the victim’s stop, the warrant states, “Garcia-Sarvia says something to the effect of ‘[victim’s name] tomorrow, I don’t want to see you crying over here.’” 

As the victim stands to exit the bus, “Garcia-Sarvia begins chanting several times  ‘let him pass, the crying baby,’” the warrant states. Reportedly the victim attempts to leave the bus with “an article of clothing, possibly a sweat shirt, folded up on top of his head” as he walks up the isle towards the exit. As he is about to exit, the warrant says Garcia-Sarvia “pulls at the article of clothing on [the victim]’s head. He does this several times and it appears that he is preventing [the victim] from exiting as he does this. As [the victim] exits, Garcia-Sarvia says something to the effect of  ‘there goes the crying baby.’ Several of the students on the bus are now chanting ‘crying baby’ after Garcia-Sarvia does. Garcia-Sarvia is laughing throughout this incident.”

Accused questioned

The warrant reads that when police questioned Garcia-Sarvia on May 13, the accused stated that he did refer to the victim as “the crying boy” during the incident recorded on videotape, even though the student “was not crying at the time.” When police asked him if he had the victim spell “I am crying every day,” and if other students recited this, the accused confirmed that he did but he “didn’t know why,” he had chosen those words, according to the warrant. Garcia-Sarvia told police he was “going over words to spell with the kids.”

Garcia-Sarvia told police that he did not remember saying “make room for cry baby,” but after being asked “several more times” he said “it was possible,” although he said he did not remember saying it.

The accused said that when the victim was leaving the bus, he tried to “lift” the clothing off of the victim’s head “to see if he was crying,” according to the warrant. The accused said that this did not prevent the victim from exiting the bus, the warrant says.

Victim’s allegations

The victim told police that this type of behavior had been going on for a while, but that incidents such as those reported on from the video “weren’t as bad originally but began to get worse after Christmas,” the warrant says. The victim told police that he had placed his jacket over his head “so he wouldn’t hear what was being said,” and that he believed the accused had “poked him in the back,” according to the warrant. 

The victim’s father said that his child had been  “very reluctant to ride the school bus this year and does often cry about getting on the bus,” the warrant says. 

Garcia-Sarvia has been employed by First Student since August 2010.