Police: Austin school bus driver abused girl sexually
Affidavit says incidents with 5-year-old were recorded on video.
An Austin school district bus driver who admitted touching a 5-year-old student inappropriately several times was arrested Friday and charged with continuous sexual abuse of a child, his arrest affidavit says.
Cesar Antonio Maldonado, 57, was booked into the Travis County Jail on Friday night and was still being held in lieu of $50,000 bail Monday afternoon.
School district police got involved in the case May 29 after the girl told her parents that Maldonado had touched her, his arrest affidavit says. Maldonado, who had worked for the district for almost 10 years, was placed on administrative leave that day. He was fired after his arrest Friday, said school district Police Chief Ashley Gonzalez.
The parents told police their daughter started behaving strangely about two weeks before they called authorities.
The mother “reported that the victim would cry and get extremely upset every morning when it came time to board the school bus and go to school,” the document says. The mother also told police she had seen Maldonado allow the girl to sit on his lap.
Video footage from the bus taken May 17 and 23 shows that two incidents involving Maldonado and the victim happened in the morning after Maldonado arrived at Uphaus Early Childhood Center in Southeast Austin, the affidavit says. On both occasions, the bus monitor got off the bus and Maldonado closed the vehicle’s doors before he approached the victim, the affidavit says.
“Maldonado explained that once the school bus arrived at the school, the bus monitor would leave the bus, thus leaving Maldonado on the bus alone with the students,” the affidavit says.
Bus monitors are allowed to leave the buses, often to escort other children, Gonzalez said.
The bus video shows that Maldonado approached the girl on both dates and touched her, the affidavit says. The victim told police that the driver touched her with his hand, and “it felt very bad” and that he said “coochie coochie” to her, the document says.
It was unclear Monday whether other children were in the bus at the time of the reported incidents. School district officials said they review bus security video only when an incident is reported.
Police first interviewed Maldonado on Wednesday because he had been out of the country, Gonzalez said. Maldonado initially denied having any inappropri-
Showers and thunderstorms that swept through Austin over the weekend added nearly an inch of rainfall to the summer’s below-average totals, National Weather Service meteorologists said.
Austin has had a particularly dry summer so far, seeing lower rainfall amounts than what is typically recorded, said meteorologist Ethan Williams.
Austin-Bergstrom International Airport’s weather station has recorded 5.72 inches of rainfall since May 1, and rain gauges at Camp Mabry have notched 11.05 inches, meteorologists said. Normally, 11.78 inches of rain fall at the airport and 11.37 inches at Camp Mabry during the same time period, Williams said.
That puts the airport about 6 inches behind normal, with Camp Mabry lagging by about three-tenths of an inch.
Over the weekend, 0.61 of an inch of rain was recorded by gauges at the airport, Williams said. Camp Mabry had 0.32.
Between Jan. 1 and Aug. 13, gauges at the airport have recorded 14.22 inches of rain. They typically record 21.39 inches by this time, Williams said.
“We’re still, for this time of year, a little below average for the airport,” he said. “The rain that happened over the weekend definitely helped.”
Williams attributed the low rainfall amounts this summer to a high-pressure system that brought dry air to the area.
The weekend’s more than a halfinch of rain could have an impact on easing the area’s drought, Williams said, but it is still a little too early to tell how significant it will be.
Moderate drought conditions