Little Alex Susko has two long, straight wounds on his neck, from behind his left ear around to his chin.
Alex's mother Christen Radmacher said, "He tells me it hurts. He says, 'Mommy, it hurts.'"
They are wounds so concerning to his mother that she took pictures of them and even had a doctor look at them.
"It's either rope burn, or... They said that it's abuse," Radmacher explained. "He told me that it's abuse."
Radmacher says Alex can't really say what happened. He is autistic and doesn't speak as well as most children about to turn four. But when she took him to the school bus on Thursday, she says what he said was enough for anyone to understand.
"Alex said, 'No bus, no bus, Mommy. No bus, Mommy,'" Radmacher recalled.
Radmacher says Alex was fine before he got on the school bus Wednesday morning. She only found out he was injured when his teacher called later that day. She says what upsets her, though, is that Clear Creek ISD officials now say they have no video from inside the bus that morning. She claims initially the district said it had footage of whatever might have happened.
Further, Radmacher says though the district initially said an employee who was involved was fired, she says CCISD now tells her that person was only suspended. School district officials say they legally cannot say much about the investigation. Without telling Eyewitness News the exact status of any employee involved, they did say they have a standard procedure for such incidents.
Janice Scott, Clear Creek ISD spokesperson, said, "It is our standard operating procedure to put employees on administrative leave, pending the outcome of an investigation."
Clear Creek ISD officials tell Eyewitness News they generally do have videotape of what happens inside most of its buses. They cannot say if they had a functioning camera inside Alex's bus on Wednesday morning.