Berkeley County bus driver allegedly uses force to make student driving in the bus wear mask, parent files lawsuit against the driver and the school district

Berkeley County School District and a bus driver are sued by a parent who claims that the bus driver allegedly used force in one occasion to make his 9-year-old child wear mask while driving in the bus.

We tried to contact the school district about the incident, but a representative said they could not comment at this point of the lawsuit.

The lawsuit was filed against two people believed to be responsible according to the parent, and the school district:

• The bus driver – Irvin Nelson
• the Director of Transportation – Eric Scriven
• Berkeley County School District

According to the lawsuit, all three of them are sued for counts of negligence/gross negligence, assault, battery, false imprisonment, invasion of privacy as to defendants, intentional/negligent infliction of emotional distress, and conspiracy.

It was not immediately clear when the incident occurred.

Allegedly, when the student entered the bus, the bus driver started yelling at him “You gotta have a mask on… If you don’t have a mask, you can’t get on the bus. Don’t do that no more.”

The student ignored the driver and proceeded to his seat, but the driver followed him.

The father said the bus driver then grabbed at him, in what is described in the lawsuit as a “hard squeeze.”  The document claims the driver held the student there while grabbing a mask from a box and continuing to shout at the student about needing a mask.

According to the father and the other students in the bus that day, the student cried all the way home following the incident with the bus driver.

“With deliberate indifference to the rights of children to be free from harm for not wearing a facemask, Defendant BCSD and Defendant Scriven have ongoingly encouraged, tolerated, ratified, and acquiesced to a dangerous environment of harm to kids,” the lawsuit claims.

They also added that this was not an isolated incident with the same bus driver, but a thing that happened in at least several different occasions.