12-year-old boy hit by car on Vallejo street where neighbors have asked for traffic controls for years

VALLEJO — A 12-year-old boy was seriously injured on Sunday afternoon when he was struck by a BMW in a crosswalk and dragged halfway down the block in Vallejo’s St. Vincent’s Hill neighborhood, where neighbors have asked the city to help control traffic for years. 

The boy was on his bicycle at 12:30 p.m. while crossing Louisiana Street by City Park when the black BMW crossed Sacramento Street and hit him, according to neighbors. The boy suffered a head injury, lost consciousness, and was transported to Children's Hospital Oakland. An update on his condition was not immediately available.

Eli Smith, who lives near the accident scene, told the Vallejo Sun that she assisted the child just after the crash while her husband went for help. “The blood is all over the street, it is on my shirt. He was crying, ‘please God save me’ before he lost consciousness,” Smith said.

“My neighborhood has been lobbying for additional traffic safety for the intersection in front of the playground for years now,” Smith said. “There are no ‘caution children playing’ signs. There are no rumble strips. There are no speed cushions. This might not have happened if the city had responded to our concerns.”

Surveillance video obtained by the Vallejo Sun shows the driver skid to a stop and roll over the bicycle after the child had already been thrown from the car. The driver stayed on scene until police arrived and was not arrested.

Another neighbor, Roxane Dungereaux, witnessed the accident and said she was sitting at her open window when she heard heavy acceleration immediately followed by the sound of the crash. 

“I could hear he was going super fast, it sounded like his car revved up before the impact,” she said. When she came outside, she saw the boy in the middle of the street where the car had thrown him. He asked “am I okay?” over and over again, she said.

Later a police officer questioned Dungereaux about what had happened. Dungereaux asked why police let the driver go without giving him a breathalyzer test. She said the officer responded that the driver had “been through enough for today.”

Dungereaux said that the officer seemed to blame the boy for the accident, stating that he was crossing the street the wrong way and that his bicycle’s brakes were not working.

“You’re blaming a kid on a bike vs. someone driving a 3,000 pound car?” Dungereaux said. “You’re serious, the kid is the responsible part in this?”

Vallejo police spokesperson Sgt. Rashad Hollis said Wednesday that “an arrest could be made at a later charge but this appears to be an accident.”

“You only get breathalyzed if you appear to be impaired,” Hollis said, and “there were no signs of impairment."

At the time of the crash, the boy and several friends were riding bicycles on their way to the park’s playground, according to Smith. From the intersection to where the car came to a stop, it appeared the car had dragged the boy roughly 40 yards. The bicycle left scrap marks deep into the pavement and its seat was left stuck into the car’s grill.

“It's a residential neighborhood,” Smith said. “It's a four way stop sign, you would have to be going extremely fast to hit a child to throw them at that speed. Or, alternatively going very fast, and then also not looking, because it was a group of kids.”

While this Sun reporter was on scene investigating, a white SUV drove by at high speed and ignored the stop signs, almost hitting the reporter, his dog and Smith. 

“It's part of a larger structural issue here,” Smith said. “Our area is beset with sex trafficking and a lot of other crime that is violent and that's predatory on the specific neighborhood.” 

In order to deter sex trafficking, locals and city officials have asked for traffic constraints in order to make it harder for Johns to pick girls off of the street. 

“One of the things that the city had agreed to do was to invest in traffic calming measures, because they were like, we refuse to do kind of anything else for these guys that are trying to pick up like these twelve year old girls that live on my street,” Smith said.

But despite those promises, Smith said the neighborhood is still waiting for the city to implement traffic calming measures.

“We need some solution to keep the children safe at this playground. I am begging you to do whatever it takes and make this happen,” Smith said. “This is not an impossible problem. This is not a high ask. You can afford it. You have the resources. No more excuses. Put in speed cushions or a roundabout or whatever you have to do.”

“It is absolutely shameful that we have told you again and again that a child was going to get killed on this street if you did not intervene and that you have done nothing,” Smith said.

The boy's father started a fundraiser on Wednesday order to help with hospital expenses.

Editor's note: This story has been updated to include comments from the Vallejo Police Department.