A video of a 68-year-old school bus monitor being mercilessly taunted by seventh-graders became a rallying point against bullies Thursday, with a fund for the New York state grandmother raising at least $380,000 and a deluge of people demanding harsh punishment for the boys.Police said Karen Klein does not want her young tormenters to face criminal charges, partly because of the storm of criticism leveled at the boys from the Rochester suburb of Greece after the video went viral. “They’ve received death threats,” Greece Police Capt. Steve Chatterton said Thursday. “Their families have been threatened. We have custody of one of their cellphones, and he had over 1,000 missed calls and 1,000 text messages threatening him. And he’s 13 years old. That must stop.” The verbal abuse was captured in a 10-minute cellphone video recorded Monday by a student of Athena Middle School in suburban Rochester and later posted to YouTube. The video shows Klein trying her best to ignore the stream of profanity, insults and outright threats directed at her. One student taunted: “You don’t have a family because they all killed themselves because they don’t want to be near you.” Klein’s oldest son killed himself 10 years ago. Eventually, she appears to break down in tears.
