School bus driver charged with giving fentanyl to students

RIVERSIDE, Calif. (AP) — A bus driver at a private Southern California school was charged Friday with selling fentanyl to special-needs students on campus, including a girl who was treated for an overdose.

Melissa Harloam-Garrison, 46, was charged with child endangerment and furnishing controlled substances to a minor, along with other drug and weapons charges.

She and her husband, David Garrison, 58, were arrested Tuesday. He was charged with possession of controlled substances while armed, illegal possession of a gun and being a convicted domestic abuser in possession of a firearm.

The two were scheduled for arraignment on Friday but that was continued to Monday, KNBC-TV reported.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether the couple had attorneys to speak for them.

Harloam-Garrison worked as a bus driver and security guard and lived in a cottage on the campus of the Bright Futures Academy in Riverside, a private kindergarten-through-12th grade school serving students with behavioral problems and other special needs, authorities said.

Her mother owns the academy, police said.

Officers who went to the school on Tuesday to deal with a report of an unruly student were told by staff that they suspected Harloam-Garrison of furnishing drugs to the students, police said.

Police said they seized more than 100 suspected fentanyl pills and two handguns from the couple’s cottage.

Harloam-Garrison and her husband recruited several students to help peddle the drug, which was sold to about a dozen students, authorities alleged.

Their arrests came a week after a teenaged girl who attends the school overdosed and needed medical care, authorities said.