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WEST JORDAN — Deliberations will continue Thursday as jurors determine whether a former Draper bus driver sexually abused two 5-year-old girls who have special needs whom he drove to school.
After a week at trial, the five-woman, three-man jury deliberated the case for more than seven hours Wednesday before breaking for the evening. Deliberations will resume at 8 a.m. Thursday.
In closing arguments Wednesday, prosecutor Nathan Evershed told jurors that hours of surveillance footage and other testimony presented in the case back up the testimony of one of those girls, who testified last week that the bus driver, John Carrell, put his hand under her pants or skirt and touched her "every day."
"Everything corroborates that little girl's testimony," Evershed said, reviewing a number of images captured from the surveillance footage and detailing the amount of time Carrell spent, sometimes four times as long, unbuckling the girl's seat belt.
Defense attorneys, however, argued that the country's heightened sensitivity has inflated a child's unclear comments out of proportion.
"Did she say he touched her? No," defense attorney Ron Yengich said of the girl's initial statement. "But that is how things get out of hand and we begin to determine there has been child sex abuse. … We want to protect children, but we can over-represent what they say."
Surveillance footage from the bus shows Carrell, 62, holding the girl close to him, on his lap or standing between his legs, his left hand often hidden somewhere near the girl's waist. Prosecutors said that the way the bus driver would sometimes position the girl's backpack was meant to block the view of what was happening. At other times he would nuzzle her hair or kiss the top of her head.
The Draper man testified that while he was affectionate with the girl, he was only treating her as he would one of his own grandchildren, adamantly insisting that nothing inappropriate happened.
On the witness stand, the girl, now 6, testified that the bus driver would touch her inappropriately "every day" as he unbuckled her seat belt and as they waited for a teacher to come get her off the bus.
Yengich told jurors Wednesday that arguments presented by prosecutors form a theory but provide no direct proof. Though he said the girl's testimony must be fairly considered, he implied her initial comments about the bus driver were taken out of context by well meaning but overreacting adults.
Good people have made a mistake. A statement was made by a little girl … and good people jumped in. It doesn't mean (the little girl) is lying, it just means she's been telling what she's told to tell. Children do that.
–Defense attorney Ron Yengich to jury
"Good people have made a mistake. A statement was made by a little girl … and good people jumped in," Yengich told the jury. "It doesn't mean (the little girl) is lying, it just means she's been telling what she's told to tell. Children do that."
Yengich urged jurors not to let coached statements by the little girl send an innocent man to prison.
Evershed, however, asked the jury to find Carrell guilty on all counts, saying the patterns in his behaviors highlight the extra attention he paid to the two girls and video evidence leaves no question that inappropriate touching occurred.
Carrell is charged with 33 counts of aggravated sexual abuse of a child, a first-degree felony. He is accused of inappropriately touching the girls on several occasions between March 12 and April 3, 2014, as he waited on the bus with them at Altara Elementary School, 800 E. 11000 South. Twenty-three of those charges are connected to the first girl, who spurred an investigation after she made troubling statements to her father last year.
The remaining charges refer to a second 5-year-old girl on a separate route, as the cameras captured Carrell with his hand on the girl's crotch as he buckled or unbuckled her seat belt and helped her from her seat.
In his testimony, Carrell said he was trying to position the girl on the seat in order to buckle the seat belt, noting that she would sometimes become upset and insist on wearing her backpack, making it difficult to fasten the multi-point restraint. If he placed his hand on the girl's crotch as he helped her on the bus, it was inadvertent, he said.
Each of the 33 charges Carrell faces carries a potential maximum prison sentence of 15 years to life.
Contributing: Sam Penrod
