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Bicycling

You Can Drive Over a Child, But Don’t Drive Away After

1:45 PM EDT on July 2, 2008

The Daily News today has the story of a 10-year-old Suffolk County cyclist who was mangled by a hit-and-run driver on Monday, the first day of the boy's summer vacation. Hit while riding with a friend, the unidentified kid had both his legs broken. But according to police, the driver's only offense was what he did after the crash.

[T]he van's driver stopped briefly to watch the boywrithe in pain on the road before driving off, police said Tuesday. Thestrange thing is, that up to that point, he hadn't done anything wrong,as far as police know.

"I can't imagine that he didn't know that he had hit someone," Detective Sgt. William Rand said.

Until the van's driver left the scene, the mishap did not appear to have involved any illegal act on the part of the van driver. "He should have stopped," Rand said. "This really would have been considered an accident."

So until he drove away from the scene, all the driver had done was run over and maim a child. It was a mishap. An accident.

Really, happens all the time.

Brad Aaron
Brad Aaron began writing for Streetsblog in 2007, after years as a reporter, editor, and publisher in the alternative weekly business. Brad adopted New York'’s dysfunctional traffic justice system as his primary beat for Streetsblog. He lives in Manhattan.

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