VALLEJO – School community members are calling for action to make streets near Cooper Elementary safer after a driver struck two four-year-old twin girls and their 76-year-old grandmother last week.
Video obtained by the Vallejo Sun shows a van turning from Del Mar Avenue onto Tuolumne Street and striking two girls and their grandmother shortly after dismissal at 1:30 p.m. on Monday as they were walking in a crosswalk, knocking them to the ground.
“He wasn’t going very fast,” said Bill Smith, the neighbor who captured the video who has lived across the street from Cooper for almost 40 years. “Thank God; if he had been it would have been a totally different situation.”
Video obtained by the Vallejo Sun shows the two girls struck by a car while crossing the street.
Multiple witnesses told the Vallejo Sun that police and medical staff showed up shortly after the incident. Neither the twin girls nor their grandmother suffered major injuries. Smith said the driver cooperated with law enforcement and was “very apologetic.”
The girls’ mother, Yien Saelee-Blair, told the Vallejo Sun that the incident traumatized her daughters.
“For sure there’s post traumatic trauma,” Saelee-Blair said a few days after the accident. “They think it’s going to happen again. They don’t want to go back to school yet.”
Melvin Blair, the girls’ father, said that a representative from the Vallejo City Unified School District reached out to the family following the incident to check in, offered to provide therapy sessions, and made accommodations so that the girls could do their school work from home for a few days. The girls returned to school this week.
Laura Iriarte, a kindergarten teacher at Cooper, said that she thinks the city needs to make the streets near the school safer, in particular Tuolumne Street.
“Cars are flying down Tuolumne right now,” Iriarte said. “We need better signage with better visibility.”
Neighbors agree. Amy Gallejos, who lives nearby, said it’s “scary crossing that street” and that a few years ago a car bumped into her while she was walking in the same area where the twins and their grandmother were hit.
Smith said it feels like students at Cooper are “playing dodgeball” against traffic when they’re going to and from school because it’s so busy and people drive quickly. On a visit to Cooper last week, this reporter witnessed over 175 cars pass through the intersection outside the school during the five minutes after school let out.
Blair, who lives on Tuolumne Street, said that the accident isn’t the first time in recent months a vehicle has harmed his family in the area. A vehicle slammed into and totaled his mother’s car along with the fence outside his family’s home in early March, Blair said. He shared photos with the Vallejo Sun showing the damage.
“We care about the children but we also worry about adults,” Blair said. “Multiple neighbors I know walk and exercise here daily. Their safety is also our concern.”
For traffic going south on Tuolumne Street, there’s a sign alerting drivers to a reduced speed limit when students are present, from 35 mph to 25 mph. There’s a similar sign for traffic going north as well, but it’s obscured by the branches of a sycamore tree.
Gallejos said she’d like to see signs that show how quickly a driver is going, flashing lights at the crosswalk, and ideally, a police officer stationed nearby to issue traffic tickets. She also wants speed bumps installed, but she and other neighbors told the Vallejo Sun that that idea has been nixed because there are two nearby hospitals, and ambulances need to drive quickly down Tuolumne.
In response to emailed questions about how the city can better deal with traffic and pedestrian safety along Tuolumne Street and near Cooper, city spokesperson Robert Briseño said the city is working on the issue, but it’s unclear when exactly it will take action.
“The city is currently reviewing the situation and working with our traffic engineer to develop an appropriate solution,” Briseño said. “Once a plan is finalized, we will move forward with implementation as quickly as possible. At this time, the timeline is not yet known, as this process will take some time.”
Vallejo school district spokesperson Maral Papakhian said that while traffic modifications such as signage falls outside the district’s jurisdiction, district leadership is bringing the issue up at joint meetings with city officials.
Papakhian said the district is currently looking into the situation as well to see what improvements can be made, which could mean assigning a crossing guard to the school.
“We are also in communication with site leadership to assess any additional safety measures that may be appropriate at the school level,” Papakhian said. “This includes reviewing current supervision and arrival/dismissal procedures. We do have crossing guards at some locations across the district, and we are evaluating the needs at Cooper as part of this broader review.”
Smith, a retired garbage truck driver, doesn’t want to wait for the city or the school district. Starting from the day after the accident, Smith has volunteered as a crossing guard during arrival and dismissal. He sets up green signs at the busy intersection which read “slow,” dons a fluorescent green vest, and carries a stop sign to help keep pedestrians safe as they cross the street.
Smith’s wife, daughter and grandchild all attended Cooper and he still advocates for the school. When district leadership was considering closing the campus earlier this school year, Smith put up a giant sign reading “SAVE COOPER” outside his home. He said he started volunteering as a crossing guard because it “needed to be done.”
Community members are grateful. Blair said Smith’s presence has eased his and his family’s mind.
“Thanks to Bill for all he’s done,” Blair said. “He doesn’t even know us, but he didn’t need to know us to help us out.”
In December, the district decided not to close Cooper, and to close Pennycook, Highland and Lincoln elementary schools instead. According to Papakhian, this means 150 to 200 additional students will attend Cooper next school year.
“Obviously something has to change,” Blair said. “We need to be sure there’s more of a safety net because there’s going to be even more students next year.”
Smith said that he’s happy to help by volunteering but he could really use more help. There’s portions of the intersection he’s unable to cover during the school’s busy arrival and dismissal period. “If I could get one more person on the other corner over there it sure would make it a lot better,” Smith said.
Editor's note: This story has been updated to correct the grade taught by Laura Iriarte.
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