Thread: Follow-up from yesterdays hit-and run with toddler

didn't see him' -- dad's pickup kills son

August 20, 2006

BY FRANK MAIN Crime Reporter





Julia Lopez will always remember the screams that erupted when her husband backed up his pickup truck to make room for a driver to squeeze past.

"The boy! The boy!" shrieked a woman in the vehicle behind her husband.

Lopez's husband jumped out and found their 15-month-old son, William, unconscious on the pavement in the 8900 block of South Muskegon on the Southeast Side on Friday.

"My husband picked him up from the street and brought him into the house," said Lopez, 25. "He was saying, 'I didn't see him. I didn't see him.'"

The pickup truck did not run over the toddler, but his skull was fractured, police said. He was pronounced dead at 12:35 p.m. Friday at the University of Chicago's Comer Children's Hospital.




WHEN DRIVERS DON'T SEE KIDS


At least 117 unattended children under 15 years old were killed in or around vehicles through mid-July of this year in the United States. About half of those deaths involved a child who was backed over by a vehicle. Many more kids are injured that way: About 50 a week are backed over.

About 60 percent of the accidents involve a large vehicle like a pickup truck, a van or a sport-utility vehicle -- and in most cases, a parent or relative is behind the wheel.

Some safety recommendations: Drivers should walk around their vehicles before moving them; motorists should consider installing audible collision detectors or rearview video cameras; parents should keep sports equipment and toys off their driveways.
Source: Kidsandcars.org



Saturday, balloons marked the spot of the tragic accident.

"Yesterday, I felt like this was a dream," Lopez said, tears welling in her eyes. "I said, 'Wake up, William, you're sleeping.' Today, I saw a vision of my baby. He told me, 'Please don't cry anymore.' "

Lopez said she had left William on a bench on her porch and she walked to the street to speak to her husband, Wilfredo. He wanted to give her some cash he earned scavenging for recyclables, she said.

She was speaking to him through the passenger window when he backed up.

Lopez said police and an ambulance arrived, and an officer exclaimed, "Whoever did this is going to jail!"

"My husband left through the back door because he was afraid of the police officer," Lopez said.

No charges to be filed



The officer threatened to contact immigration officials if the family did not cooperate, she claimed.

Lopez said her husband fled to his mother's house. Lopez went to the hospital, then spoke to detectives.

"I didn't want to tell them the truth but finally did," she said. "They let me out of the station and told me to have my husband call them about the accident. They said he wasn't in trouble."

Police initially considered the accident a hit-and-run but said Saturday that no charges would be filed.

The accident underscores concerns by consumer advocates about the rear visibility of pickup trucks, sport-utility vehicles and vans. One safety group, Kids and Cars, is pushing for federal standards on driver visibility -- including the possibility of every vehicle having a rearview camera.

"The longer the vehicle and the higher the rear that you look out from, the more difficult it is to see a child or something on the ground behind," said David Champion, director of Consumer Union's Automotive Testing Division.

fmain@suntimes.com

So.....it's the cars fault.

Now if I ran over my kid.....I'd be in jail. On a host of offenses and "being afraid" wouldn't be an acceptable excuse.

Crazybird.....exactly what I was thinking.....blame the car.....something is wrong with the car......gotta fix the car, so some idiot without the sense God gave a goose can't look before he backs up. What needs to be fixed is the irresponsible parents who don't know where their children are.