The family of an 8-year-old autistic boy run over by a Boston Public School bus last December filed a lawsuit against the district’s embattled transportation provider, Transdev, alleging negligence on the part of the company and its driver.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Suffolk Superior Court, pertains to a crash that left 8-year-old Reginald Oates with “serious bodily injuries” including a fractured femur that required “two months of in-patient hospital and rehabilitation care, and multiple surgeries.”

It comes just over a week after the city’s mayor and school superintendent ordered an independent investigation into Transdev, due to an April bus crash that killed a 5-year-old boy, Lens Arthur Joseph, in Hyde Park.

“As a result of the collision,” the lawsuit states, “minor plaintiff Oates suffered great pain of body and anguish of mind, significant medical expenses have been incurred and will be incurred for his care and treatment, and he has suffered and will suffer a substantial loss of his ability to engage in the normal enjoyment of his life.”

Transdev said it “cannot comment on active litigation.”

The lawsuit hinges on dash cam footage from the school bus that struck Oates and Boston police reports from the Dec. 6, 2024 crash.

Per the complaint, the bus was driven by Vitnoy Laguerre onto a school sidewalk where Oates was walking with a school aide to his bus during a regular afternoon dismissal at the Curley K-8 Lower School in Jamaica Plain. The driver, Laguerre was allegedly seen on dash cam video sitting behind the wheel with his eyes closed while the bus idled on the sidewalk.

As Oates and the school aide, identified in the police report as 37-year-old Jermaine Bell, were walking onto the sidewalk in the direction of the idling bus, Laguerre is allegedly seen on video opening his eyes, immediately placing the bus in gear, and accelerating forward, the lawsuit states.

Laguerre is then allegedly seen suddenly turning the bus in the direction of Oates and Bell and then running over both on the sidewalk.

Laguerre told police he was swerving to avoid hitting Oates and “a vehicle” that had “cut in front of him” as “he was pulling the bus forward.” He said he accidentally hit the gas pedal instead of the brake, which caused him to strike both victims and damage two fences, the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit states that no other vehicles were seen on dash cam video cutting in front of the bus at the time of the collision and that the driver, Laguerre, looked “dazed” after the collision and appeared to say something to the bus monitor who was positioned in the back of the vehicle.

Laguerre “then begins to smile and laugh about the accident and shrugs his shoulders as if he was unsure what happened,” the lawsuit states.

The collision was “due to the negligence of defendant Laguerre, who was at all relevant times operating in the course and scope of his employment for Transdev,” the lawsuit states.

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Laguerre was cited by the Boston Police Department for operating negligently so as to endanger and for unsafe operation of a motor vehicle, including operation on a sidewalk, the lawsuit states.

About five months later, in late April, another BPS bus crash turned deadly, when Jean Charles, a bus driver with lapsed credentials and a spotty driving record, struck and killed 5-year-old kindergartener Lens Arthur Joseph in Hyde Park. Charles resigned after being suspended and ahead of his termination hearing.

Mayor Michelle Wu and BPS Superintendent Mary Skipper launched an independent review of Transdev, the school district’s contracted transportation provider since 2013, on May 23.