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Taylor Brock posted a video of the Jan. 23 incident to her blog ModMa, in which both students can be heard exchanging words. First, the girl aggressively grabs the boy's face. She stops and they exchange words. Then, she puts her hands around his neck.
The bus driver can be overheard making an announcement reminding students to stay in their seats. The camera pans away.
Brock says her son, a seventh grader at Walt Whitman Middle School in Alexandria, came home that day distraught, with marks on his neck.
"He's definitely sad and depressed," Brock tells Daily Voice. "He's scared to be at school because she's still there, and he's afraid of retaliation."
While school officials couldn't tell Brock specifically what action would be taken against the girl, they did say they would "take care of it," she writes in her blog post.
Brock took matters into her own hands and filed a police report, then got her son a two-week protection order against the girl, in which she was required to stay 50 feet away from him at all times.
Brock says the girl was apparently suspended, but it was only a matter of time before her son began seeing her again in the halls. She noted that the girl sat at a lunch table near her son, and moved closer and closer.
Brock questioned what administrators were doing to honor the protective order.
Walt Whitman Principal Craig Harris did not immediately return Daily Voice's request to know what disciplinary action was taken, what was done to ensure the boy's safety, and more, placed Saturday, Feb. 18.
Fairfax County Public Schools said in a statement to Fox29 that the school's administration handled the situation in line with the student discipline manual, and was unable to share further information.
Harris in an email to the community said the district was not at liberty to disclose details surrounding the video, and that media report "do not tell a full story."
"I do want to share what I can, because I want to reassure you that we take safety very seriously at Whitman Middle School," Harris writes. "We recognize the level of trust that it takes to leave your child in our care every day, and we do not take that lightly."
Brock pulled her son from Walt Whitman altogether, and he will begin his first day at a new school on Tuesday, Feb. 21, she tells Daily Voice.
"I am heartbroken for all children who endure such traumas," Brock writes on her blog. "I can't imagine how many instances go un-recorded. If the school is so permissive about this severity of a crime and the evidence of its occurrence, then I have little hope for the uncounted children who roam the halls begging for help. These children are our future. Their lives matter."
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