[WARNING: Contains adult language. Video courtesy of Shannon Guinther]
[Last updated on August 21, 2015, at 2:40 p.m.]
Silver Springs, Florida — At approximately 10 p.m. Thursday night, following outrage from multiple parents, MCSO responded to Guinther’s home and took a written statement from him. MCSO also plans to interview other parents present during the incident.
According to residents, a deputy was stationed at the bus stop Friday morning.
MCSO has stated that it was not a deputy, but rather the communications center that told Guinther that there was nothing that could be done about the driver going around the bus.
The driver of the SUV has been positively identified as Marion County firefighter, Lieutenant Steve Maculewicz, who reportedly works for the Fort McCoy station.
MCFR told Ocala Post that they are cooperating with the MCSO investigation.
After all witness statements and facts have been gathered, the case will be turned over to the State Attorney’s Office, at which time they will decide how to proceed.
Updates will follow.
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Some drivers seem to have lost all common sense when it comes to school buses and the laws that must be followed when stopping for a school bus.
On the morning of August 20, while waiting at the bus stop with his son, Shannon Guinther recorded a video of an impatient man driving around a school bus that had just boarded children at 314A North at Northeast 38th Lane Road. The bus’s stop arm was still deployed. The street is also a no passing zone.
As the man in the SUV drove by, parents began expressing their frustration toward the man.
The man, apparently referring to the school bus, replied, “If you all had a job, you wouldn’t f***ing need it.”
He then drove off as if nothing happened.
“I am a single father, I work full time, and coach football,” Guinther said. “The statement that this guy made to parents just showed his lack of class and showed that he has a sense of entitlement. Not everyone standing at a bus stop in the morning is unemployed or living off of the ‘system.'”
Guinther called the Marion County Sheriff’s Office from the scene, however, MCSO said that they could not do anything because they did not witness the incident.
Guinther asked, “How can tickets from red light cameras be enforced, but you cannot use an unedited video and witness statements for an incident like this?”
Ocala Post reached out to MCSO, but did not receive a response by the time this article was published.
“If law enforcement cannot do anything with the video I recorded, then they should not be able to use photos from red light cameras,” Guinther said.
Guinther said, “What is most upsetting about the video is that the guy clearly does not care about the safety of the children. He only cares about his personal needs.”
Guinther told Ocala Post that he takes this situation extremely personally.
“I, and many of my family members, work with kids every day; I take child safety very personally,” Guinther said.
He asked, “What if a child had decided at the last minute to hug his or her parent and ‘darted’ back across the street? These are small children we are talking about here…it could happen.”
He added, “If the driver had hit one of the children, that man would not have left that bus stop.”
Residents identified the man in the video as Marion County firefighter, Steve Maculewicz. However, Marion County Fire Rescue could not confirm that the driver in the video is actually a MCFR employee.