Bus driver, aide help stop series of attacks on young girls in New Jersey

Toni Yates Image
Thursday, February 2, 2017
Bus driver, aide help stop series of attacks on young girls
Toni Yates has more from Neptune.

LONG BRANCH, New Jersey -- Nate, a school bus aide, and bus driver Jose deserve every bit of attention they are getting.

On January 25th, they saw something and did something. Nate and Jose dropped off the last of their students along Bath Avenue in Long Branch, and from their bus, saw a young teenage girl being attacked.

"We were coming around the corner, she was screaming for help," said Jose.

They turned around, and he was gone. The girl says the man had taken her cellphone. As if that weren't enough, yet another girl was grabbed by the same man, right in front of them.

"I got off the bus and told her to come to me. I looked at him - it was like a blank look," Nate added.

A brother of one of the victims told Eyewitness News that his father now picks his sister up from school.

The suspect is identified as Daniel Reyes, and police say he lives at a corner house on Bath Avenue, right where the attacks happened. Police then descended on the property.

Reyes is charged with robbery, criminal restraint and sexual assault. Police say he attacked another girl earlier on the same day.