The Post reports that a male child under the age of ten was struck by a car last night, and by 11pm had died of his injuries. Police responded to the incident, which occurred in the 1600 block of Montello Avenue, around 7pm. The driver stayed on the scene. The boy's name and exact age have not yet been released.
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UPDATE
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Apparently the boy was four years old. He had chased a basketball into the street. He had five siblings. Police do not appear to be planning to press any charges against the driver.
WUSA9 reports.
Direct video link.
17 comments:
sad news. be careful when you're out there driving folks. especially this time of year when more kids are playing outside on the streets.
This is devastatingly sad. Before I go ahead blame the mother/father for not watching the child, I want to encourage drivers to be more careful and not speed through our neighborhoods.
I see this all too often. Parents have no control over their children. Children either don't listen to their parents and/or parents don't inform them of what is wrong and what is right.
Take proactive measures but teaching them to look both ways, hold hands of an adult, and ask for help before stepping onto pavement.
My thoughts go out to the child's family.
Just a tragedy all around. It seems to me that part of the problem is that a lot of drivers from Maryland cut through Trinidad looking to avoid traffic.
The construction work on H street has evidently forced a lot of traffic into the neighborhoods both north and south of H. I live on 12th, and its much busier now that it was a couple of years ago.
Obviously you folks are blaming this on the streetcars.
Ugh. Parents are at fault. End of thread.
It's maybe a tad soon for jokes about dead 4 year olds.
thanks for the sage and sober advice, elise. it really hit home for me. i was making light of the situation (cuz i hate death), and was going to post a link to
http://www.dead-baby-joke.com/
but then i thought twice.
thank you, inked and god bless.
Let's think positive and come out and listen to the American Youth Chorus. They really are cute and will brighten your day. See Elise's previous post for information on time and place.
if poo is a real person, the joke about the deceased child is enough to ban poo forever. i wish i was the moderator in this place
the child darted out to chase a ball. for all we know, this may have been his first time ever running out into the street....he was four, for god's sake. the driver has the responsibility for watching out for anything entering into the lane of traffic. young children dart out after rolling balls and such, this is a fact of life...it occurs in neighborhoods all over....be careful folks and slow down a bit...if this car was going 25 and decelerated the moment they saw the ball enter the street (with the ever present possibility that a child would follow it), i doubt highly that this child would have been fatally struck
i think the driver should be charged with something, personally. this is clearly a case of driver negligence. that's coming from someone who has never come close to hitting any of the jaywalkers, darting children, wild bike riders etc after 9 years of driving these DC streets (I didn't get a car until later in life)
this is a horribly sad event. my condolences to the family for your lose. i also can not imagine the anguish that the driver must feel.
Soul Searcher,
a neighbor who had seen the car driving said it wasn't moving fast. I think the child probably darted out between two parked cars (as often happens around here. The other day I watched a car moving down the alley towards me. It did not appear to me to be speeding (in fact, I remember thinking when I saw it that this car actually appeared to be obeying the speed limit). Right after it passed me it collided with another car on the road. I don't know if the other car was speeding, but I suspect visibility (cars parked just outside of the alley) was an issue.
Small children make mistakes. This whole thing is just a tragedy for all involved.
Sorry, but the speed limit is an *upper* limit--not a lower one. We see drivers going 25 mph on our one-block, one-way street all the time. It's absolutely too fast for the conditions. If you can't see past parked cars, you need to slow the Hell down. Half of these residential streets should have a speed limit of 15 mph, not 25.
inked,
the point is, if a car is going 25, sees the car and decelerates even to 10mph, the driver drastically decreases the possibility that the impact will be fatal...if you're going 35 and decelerate to 20, this doesn't work out so well from a fatality point of view...
Soul Searcher,
I agree that speed is key. That's why speeding is bad. My point was that you shouldn't speed, especially in neighborhoods (it doesn't sound like this driver was), but that there are rare occasions when you might not have time to stop even when you drive appropriately slowly, and with due diligence. If you aren't speeding, or otherwise being negligent/wreckless, you won't be charged.
The other points with the alley story were:
-use greater caution when exiting/passing an alley, and;
-large vehicles parked just outside alleys can block the view.
So sad. I heard on the news that the driver was absolutely devastated...and also heard the neighbors say that though the traffic often speeds through there, this car wasn't going fast. I consider myself a cautious driver, but it is definitely easy to go 25 without even thinking, particulary on wider streets.
lock her and through the key away
she was alway a unfit mother and niehbors know about it
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