Phones down, eyes up Girl strangled by her own wheelchair as bus monitor texted, checked Instagram 10 years in prison is possible. Nate Anderson Jan 16, 2025 5:13 pm | 96 Even when you're not driving, texting can be dangerous. Credit: Benjamin Rondel | Getty Images Even when you're not driving, texting can be dangerous. Credit: Benjamin Rondel | Getty Images Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn moreCell phones are magnets for our attention, but you can, of course, face significant legal jeopardy for giving them that attention. Just ask the "safety driver" of an Uber self-driving vehicle, which hit and killed a pedestrian in Arizona in 2018. According to authorities, the driver was watching The Voice on Hulu just before the crashand was then charged with negligent homicide.These kinds of cases are always tragic because they feel so easily avoidable, but they also happen with enough regularity that it's easy to tune them out. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 3,308 people were killed by distracted drivers in 2022 aloneand "texting is the most alarming distraction."That's why states continue to crack down on cell phone use while driving. A Colorado law that went into effect on January 1, for instance, bans a driver from using any mobile electronic device unless it is hands-free. Thirty US states now have such bans in place.But a trial that wrapped up in New Jersey this week caught my attention, because it is one of the sadder and stranger examples of cell phone-mediated distraction while in a vehicle. A young girl died, and a 28-year-old woman is probably going to jail, but this is not your typical tale of texting while driving. Texting was involved34 times, in factbut driving had nothing to do with what happened.Child endangermentThe trial was about an incident in Franklin Township, New Jersey, on July 17, 2023, when a 6-year-old girl named Fajr Williams got on a bus to attend a summer program. Williams had disabilities and was confined to her wheelchair. The bus had a spot for anchoring wheelchairs to the ground, and it had a ride-along bus monitor named Amanda Davila, 28, who was supposed to watch and assist kids like Williams.According to state prosecutors, Williams was properly strapped into her wheelchair and had been taken down to the bus by her older sister. Williams was then loaded onto the bus, but her chair was not allegedly attached to the floor correctly, nor were the proper seatbelts used. As a result, while the bus drove its route to school that morning, Williams began to slide down the seat of her wheelchair. (She could not control her trunk movements normally, and so she was unable to sit back up.) At some point in the ride, she slid low enough that her chair's own four-point harness, which was meant to keep her upright, began to choke her. By the time the bus arrived at school, William had been strangled to death.Investigators focused on the actions of Davila, who was supposed to keep Williams within view. Instead, authorities say, video from inside the bus showed:...that defendant sat in front of the victim instead of across the aisle from her and that defendant used her cell phone with ear buds to scroll through Instagram, listen to Apple music, and send/receive 34 text messages during the bus ride instead of checking on the victim. Testimony revealed that defendant received six years of safety trainings that emphasized a no-cellphone and no-earbuds policy.The state charged Davila with both manslaughter and child endangerment, and she could have faced a couple of decades in prison.The trial itself was raw. According to a local report from NBC, "The video played in court was so painful to watch for the victim's family, her father had to leave the courtroom while jurors watched little Fajr struggling to breathe."But Davila wasn't going to take complete blame. "I made a mistake, but you guys are trying to put me away for 10 to 20 yearson a mistake," she said, going on to argue that the bus company had not in fact banned cell phone use. The New York Times spoke to her lawyer, who said that it "wasnt discouraged for her to be on her phone" and that the bus company actually used the phone to communicate with Davila and even asked her to give her number to parents.Davila also claimed that some of the straps and hooks on her bus weren't workingand that she wasn't properly trained to use them anyway. (The state put great emphasis on the regular training sessions that the bus company gave to employees.) But she admitted that she should have been sitting in the back, with her eyes on the students with disabilities.On January 13, 2025, after a week-long trial, Davila received a split decision. She was cleared on the more serious manslaughter charge but was found guilty of child endangerment and faces the possibility of a decade in jail when she is sentenced in March.Nate AndersonDeputy EditorNate AndersonDeputy Editor Nate is the deputy editor at Ars Technica. His most recent book is In Emergency, Break Glass: What Nietzsche Can Teach Us About Joyful Living in a Tech-Saturated World, which is much funnier than it sounds. 96 Comments