KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — A former Oak Ridge school bus driver who is facing an aggravated assault charge said he believes the entire situation may have been avoided if there was an assistant on the school bus with him, after an incident that caused children to fear for their safety.
The Oak Ridge Police Department said Friday that Matthew T. Bak, 73, was arrested and booked into the Anderson County Detention Facility as part of an investigation into an incident that caught the attention of Oak Ridge Schools and parents.
According to his arrest report, Bak stopped the bus in the middle of the road twice and did not let any kids off. It said the kids were yelling for help, and someone driving behind the bus reported it to authorities at around 6 p.m.
"I have driven this after-school route about three or four times, and there was actually only one time I could actually drive the route without stopping, and that was when the previous driver from whom I took this over was occupying these children," said Bak, who worked as a bus driver with First Student. "I had to deal with the situation as it was. Now in school, the children can be separated. On the bus, they cannot."
Officers reviewed camera footage on the bus, saying they could see Bak going to the back of the bus, to the rear driver's side. The driver was seen telling one of the kids that he told them to sit down, saying he began speaking "in an elevated voice." The child is slumped down in their seat.
"It was constant, it was always constant. And on that day, I would like to have shouted a little bit more that they should sit down and quiet down. But I was already hoarse. In fact, four days later, still rather dealing with the aftermath of that verbal confrontation," he said. "I am eminently sorry that that took place. But as I had said, I am only human and have a limited, not eternal, but limited amount of patience."
ORPD said the video showed Bak grabbing a child's leg "and appears to be attempting to reposition" their leg. At that point, the kids on the bus can be heard screaming and "appear to be upset." Authorities said Bak then went back to the front of the bus and can be heard saying, "shut up."
"At one point, I wore out. The girls wore me out. I have not done or dealt with people that were obstinately, oppositionally defiant as these five or six girls. Never, never in my life have I been confronted with a group that has been so opposed to everything — to all, all order to all logic. It's never occurred," he said. "My best attempts to try and establish order was fruitless."
The arrest report said the child was interviewed a day later by the Child Advocacy Center in Clinton. It said the child described an action "consistent with strangulation," with the child saying they were afraid they were "going to die" and that they were never going to see their parents again.
"When the child sits down and I finally got her to sit down the top of the seat may have may have hidden that. But it does not stand to logic that I was strangling her, because she was audible and the sound on the camera would have picked up her audible exchange. If I was strangling her, the sound would not have been there. So by logic, the fabrication that I was strangling her — I was holding her, I was pleading, 'If she remembered, I told her to sit down,'" he said. "I was apoplectic."
He said he was "not in the right mind" during the incident. He also said he would apologize to the parents and to the child involved in the incident.
"There can be no excuse, should be no excuse, to lose your temper with children. And I realized that, which is why it's appropriate that I lost the job," he said. "But these children have no concept of what they have also done to me, and that is they've pushed me beyond the brink of sanity."
"I have been dealing with children for a very long time and have never come across a situation where children have acted psychopathically. And I believe in my heart that there's there's something wrong, maybe at a lot of points, there's something wrong," he said.
Oak Ridge School quickly removed Bak from all bus assignments in the district. First Student also said they terminated his position. First Student also previously released a statement about the incident, available below.
"At First Student, we take our responsibility to provide safe transportation very seriously and recognize the tremendous amount of trust parents place in us every school day. Certainly, we understand the concern the incident has caused. This sort of behavior will not be tolerated, and we have initiated the termination process."
"I know that I have lost all, any opportunity to drive another school bus. That should be clear. I believe that somewhere along here, I am also the victim of all this. I should have been an aide. There should have been an opportunity to have an aide," he said. "But at this moment, things occurred so quickly, that there was no opportunity. So I don't know what will happen."
Bak is now out of prison on bond.