BROOKLYN, New York — One day after a seven-year-old boy tragically died when a woman driving a Jeep sports utility vehicle ran him over while walking to school, the City assigned two crossing guards to assist children and their parents get to school safely. A makeshift memorial marks the spot nearest to where the child […]
BROOKLYN, New York — One day after a seven-year-old boy tragically died when a woman driving a Jeep sports utility vehicle ran him over while walking to school, the City assigned two crossing guards to assist children and their parents get to school safely. A makeshift memorial marks the spot nearest to where the child was hit at the intersection of Pennsylvania and Blake Avenues in the village of East New York in Brooklyn. Local residents lamented the fact that the City assigned crossing guards one day after a child was killed according to an article appearing in the New York Daily News. The boy might still be alive if the guards were assigned to the intersection 24 hours earlier.
Parents of school-aged children expressed dismay over the timing of the crossing guards’ assignment. They complained that the tragedy could have been avoided if there were crossing guards.
At 8:15 a.m., the day before the crossing guards were assigned to patrol the intersection of Blake and Pennsylvania Avenues, a woman operating a Jeep SUV took a right-hand turn and mowed down the seven-year-old boy and injured his 39-year-old mother. The mother and son were walking to Public School 328, which was only a couple of hundred feet away from where the SUV ran the child down.
A witness to the crash described what she saw. She said that the Jeep ‘s driver was not paying attention to the road as she turned right and hit the mother and son pedestrians. The pedestrians were in the crosswalk when the Jeep SUV hit them. The witness, who is the father of three schoolchildren, could not sleep that night because of the horrors of the accident he witnessed played over and over in his mind. He said that he recalls the mother screaming for help from bystanders. People rushed to the child’s aid because medics arrive to take him to the hospital where he was declared dead.