Spitballs Flavor Norco Mayor’s $1-Million Suit

NORCO — This city’s new mayor is suing the local school district for $1 million, alleging that a bus driver manhandled his 7-year-old son and forced the boy to eat spitballs from the floor of a school bus.

Ronald E. Wildfong, a city councilman who was scheduled to begin a yearlong term as mayor on Wednesday night, claims that Suzan E. Garrett repeatedly forced his son, Jason, to “pick up a spitball from the floor of the bus, and forced him to put it into his mouth and swallow it.”

Garrett could not be reached for comment and school district officials declined to discuss the case.

Wildfong’s lawsuit claims that Garrett stopped her bus on the way home from school on Oct. 24, 1985, grabbed Jason “by the shirt collar at the back of his neck and twisted him around, making him gasp for air and choke.”

After forcing Jason to eat seven or eight spitballs, Garrett “roughly shoved” the boy “to the front of the bus and physically forced him off the bus,” according to the complaint.

Wildfong refused to discuss the case or his son’s alleged injuries with a reporter.