School Bus Child Had Problems, And City Knew

City officials knew an 8-year-old boy whose mischief on a school bus led to the death of a schoolmate had disciplinary problems.Attorneys for the Corporation Counsel, which is handling the case, said the boy had a history of behavioral problems at school, and had been suspended Friday for sneaking onto a different school bus.The boy, Tafiri, referred to only by his first name because of his age, appeared in Brooklyn Family Court yesterday for a pre-petition hearing to determine whether the court had jurisdiction over the case. He was not formally charged, although Judge Maureen McLeod remanded him to the custody of Administration for Children’s Services, where he will be placed in a diagnostic assessment facility to undergo emotional, psychological, and social evaluations.The boy was arrested Monday night on charges of criminally negligent homicide after police said he released the parking brake on a school bus that hit his 8-year-old classmate, Amber Sadiq, earlier that day.According to police, the boy snuck onto the bus and tried to drive it, causing the vehicle to roll forward on Nostrand Avenue in Crown Heights. Amber was pinned underneath.The boy is believed to have snuck into the bus through the emergency exit, which under state law, cannot be locked because of the possibility that a child may have been left on the bus after everyone else had exited.Following yesterday’s decision, a general status meeting will take place today, and court will reconvene tomorrow to determine if the Corporation Counsel will file a petition of juvenile delinquency.Court observers said it is exceedingly uncommon for a child so young to face such serious charges. The last case where a young child was involved in another individual’s death was almost two years ago, when a 9-year-old girl allegedly stabbed and killed her 10-year-old playmate. That case is pending, a spokeswoman for Corporation Counsel, Kate O’Brien Ahlers, said.Such cases are rare because age often precludes attorneys from proving delinquency, a professor of law at Pace University Law School, the author of several books on juvenile delinquency, Merril Sobie, said. “Most children of that age do not have criminal capacity. That is, the intent to commit a crime, or the ability to know when he’s acting recklessly, which is this case,” he said.In fact, yesterday’s proceedings dwarfed the young defendant, who stands about 4 feet tall. Dressed in an oversized red sweatshirt that hung past his knees, he cried periodically throughout court proceedings and had to be consoled by his attorneys and court officers. During a closed-door conference between the judge and the attorneys, he asked a court officer when he could go home.One of his attorneys, Samuel Karliner, later described his client as being traumatized and scared. He said the boy was just playing on the bus, which should have been supervised. “It proved to be an attractive nuisance,” Mr. Karliner said.The accident occurred blocks away from where both children lived on Crown Street. Both attended the nearby P.S. 161, and a spokesman for the girl’s family, Carlos Peguro, said the two knew each other.As of last night, Mr. Peguro said Amber’s family was “inconsolable,” and was busy making funeral arrangements. He also said they would not press charges because they do not consider him the boy an adult and his family is already suffering.ACS had been providing services to the boy’s family since January 2005, a court liaison officer from the Department of Probation, Kim Lawton, said in court yesterday. Among various points of contact with the agency, Ms. Lawton said a caseworker visited the family’s home as recently as Monday. She also said the boy reportedly missed 40 days of school and was late 14 times since the beginning of the school year.The Corporation Counsel attorney assigned to the case, Suzette Rivera, corroborated her account, and said the boy had been suspended three times this year, and often required one-on-one supervision at school.A spokeswoman for ACS declined to comment on the case.Mr. Karliner said ACS never investigated allegations of neglect, although it was providing support for the boy’s father, who was raising him and a younger brother without the help of their mother, who lives in Florida. The father was in court, and wiped tears from his face after the judge’s decision.

School Bus Child Had Problems, And City Knew

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