An Arizona mother was taken into custody after attacking a 64-year-old substitute school bus driver whom she thought was talking about her daughter.
Hermenegilda Marquez, 27, was arrested and charged with aggravated assault on a school employee stemming from a confrontation that escalated on April 11, local news reported. It occurred after the victim, who was not named, dropped off students at a bus stop in Mesa, about 19 miles from Phoenix.
Video obtained by WLBT shows a woman with sunglasses walking into the vehicle and immediately pushing the driver.
“You talking s**t about my daughter?” the woman said before hitting the victim multiple times.
She is also captured pulling on the driver’s hair during the heated encounter. Police alleged that Marquez struck the victim in the head and face “before closing her hands into fists and continuing to pummel the victim with both hands,” Fox 10 reported. The victim is heard screaming throughout the entire attack.
At one point, “a male [later identified as the defendant’s boyfriend] runs onto the bus and grabs the defendant and pulling her off of the bus,” according to the outlet.
Marquez reportedly left the scene but was detained last Wednesday. Per WLBT, the driver told officials that she didn’t know the suspect or her daughter.
Prior to the attack, Marquez pressed the victim about talking about her child. According to the report, the driver denied the claim and told the mother to get off her bus. The driver was then met with grievances from two other parents, one of whom said: “This is not the first time we have complained about you.”
“OK,” the driver said. “Get off my bus.”
WLBT reported that the physical interaction with Marquez happened seconds later. During the incident, the driver used her radio to call for assistance, and her pacemaker began to shock her.
Following her arrest, police noted “the defendant was shown video of the attack on the bus and was told that because she was on video committing the assault, she would be charged with a felony, but she showed no emotion upon hearing this,” according to Fox 10.
Marquez was reportedly on unsupervised probation for a domestic violence-related assault.
