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Tasered mom disputes arrest report

She denies she was violent, cursing or trying to flee arrest after confronting a school bus driver.

By REBECCA CATALANELLO
Published September 21, 2006

TAMPA - The New Tampa mom who was struck by a Taser and arrested in front of her daughter's school on Wednesday says the charges are unfounded.

Shannon Leah Snyder, 39, said she neither cursed nor pushed a law enforcement officer during an altercation with her 11-year-old daughter's bus driver.

According to Snyder, who uses a cane to get around, the matter stemmed from early September, when her daughter was one of three children who had to sit on the floor of the crowded bus on the way home from Buchanan Middle School.

Snyder asked school officials not to let it happen again. So they assigned her daughter a seat near the front of the bus.

Snyder said her daughter saw that as punishment; now she could not sit with friends near the back. Instead, she had to sit between two boys, Snyder said.

Stephen Hegarty, a spokesman for Hillsborough schools, says the assigned seat actually was with the girl's friends.

On Monday, Snyder sent her daughter to the bus stop with a note for driver Vivian Alexander, stating that a school administrator told her that her child should not be punished. Still, she says, her daughter was forced to sit in a seat she didn't want.

On Tuesday morning, Snyder confronted the bus driver at the stop. She said she stood on a step of the bus and instructed her daughter to remain in a seat with friends. If the bus driver wanted her to move, she said, she would have to physically move her.

At that point, the bus driver began to close the doors, causing her to stumble out of the bus, Snyder said.

A Hillsborough sheriff's arrest report states that Snyder followed the bus to school, but she says she dropped two of her other children off at their schools before proceeding to Buchanan.

When she got to Buchanan, at 1001 W Bearss Ave., she went to the office and got a school resource officer to walk with her to the bus, Snyder said.

At the bus, driver Alexander raised her voice and waved her arms, Snyder said. She said she yelled, but didn't curse, in response.

Hegarty said audio from the bus shows Snyder can be heard yelling while Alexander's voice is barely audible.

Snyder said that as the school resource deputy started to handcuff her, she stumbled. She got up, headed toward her car to get her cane and was stunned with a Taser, she said. She said she never hit the officer, never fled and never cursed.

"I'm a mother of four," Snyder said. "I don't cuss in front of any child."

Hegarty said the school district stands by the account in the arrest report.

[Last modified September 21, 2006, 01:09:07]