A high desert father says for at least nine months he’s been trying to get his daughter’s school and the district to do something about bullying he said she suffered, but he says they never did.
So he opted instead to take care of it himself, and now Tom Tranter is speaking out about an incident that he said made him look bad when all he was trying to do was defend himself.
“She’d always mentioned the kids were bullying her and I thought she could handle it,” Tranter said. “Last time, she mentioned they were boys and I figured that’s not something she deserves to be handling.”
It stemmed from an incident Thursday. Tranter said his daughter sent him a text that she was being bullied on her school bus. So he met her at her stop at Third and Lime in Hesperia.
"The fact that they can even do this on the bus is just outlandish,” Tranter said. “The bullying needs to stop.”
Tranter said the bus driver asked his daughter to identify the bullies, but her aunt said they intimidated her.
“They all started chanting ‘snitch snitch snitch!’ That’s not right at all,” said Jackie Tranter.
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That’s when her dad said he took matters into his own hands.
And that step has caused some controversy. Tranter said some local reports of the incident mischaracterized his actions.
“So I took one step on the bus to look down the aisle to get them to stop chanting and to give my daughter the courage to confront the bullies,” Tranter said.
He said the bus driver forced him off but not before he spotted two young boys believed to be the bullies — and he followed them the moment they got off the bus.
“I was just trying to follow them home, which I told the bus driver,” Tranter said. “I wanted to follow them home and see where they live so I could come back and talk to their parents.”
When other parents found out, he said, at least two of them surrounded his car and held him until police arrived.
“One of the bully’s mothers actually showed up and threatened to whoop his ass if we could prove it was him calling her names,” Tranter said. “And when my daughter tried to explain how she knew it was him, she cut her off and threatened her. So we’re dealing with bullies as parents as well.”
No charges have been filed. NBC4 reached out to the school and to the district offices and no one returned requests for comment.
After the calls, though, they did get in touch with Tranter and asked him to come in and file an official report about what happened.
His hope is this time, something will be done to put a stop to the bullying.
