Drivers Sought After Girl Struck, Killed in Brentwood

I found this story on KTLA News.
There was a 13 year old girl from Brentwood killed while trying to get on a school bus between Sunset Boulevard and Cliffwood Avenue. This happened before 7:20 Friday morning. The girls name has not been released but she attends Harvard Westlake Middle School. She was struck by one of two vehicles, a Mercedes-Benz or a Black Toyota. Both drivers stopped but neither identified themselves. The victim’s mother witnessed her daughter get hit by one of the vehicles. The girl was pronounced dead later at UCLA Medical Center.

My first reaction to this story is how common this is. People do not follow the laws surrounding the school bus; or any other law for that matter. It is sad that this mother had to witness her daughter get killed right in front of her own eyes.

I could not imagine watching one of my kids get hit by a car, or anything else tragic happening to them. The first thing after the incident that would go through my head is why I couldn’t stop it. I would probably blame myself, and would have a hard time going from one day to the next. Kids aren’t supposed to die before their parents. It’s not the natural way of life. This is a terrible thing that happened, but maybe it will open everyone’s eyes and make them more aware of things around them…like a big giant school bus stopped with a stop sign and flashing lights. The report said that the Toyota possibly was kids driving to school, so apparently they weren’t very careful drivers. Especially since they did a hit and run. I kind of feel for those kids too, since they will live the rest of their lives knowing they hit and killed a young girl because of their careless driving. Unfortunately, it’s too late to learn from their mistakes. What I’m a little confused about is, if the mother witnessed the accident, then why couldn’t she remember which car had hit her daughter? I guess she was so shocked and emotional about everything that she may not remember clearly. I remember seeing a girl that rode my bus get hit by a car right in front of me. It was something still to this day I can see in my head very clearly. I remember sitting towards the front of the bus, I was maybe 3rd or 4th grade at the time. But I was sitting on the left side of the bus, and I was watching an older girl walking across the street to get on the bus. There was a little hill in front of the bus that the opposite traffic would have to go over before seeing the stopped bus. She got halfway across the road and a car came flying over the hill and hit her. I cried, I was scared, and I didn’t know what to do. I remember seeing her thrown onto the car and thrown further than the length of the bus, since the car was going the opposite way as the bus. When the car and girl were gone (when she got hit) I remember seeing the girls shoe right in front of me on the road, which I could see out the bus window. It was as if when the car hit her and her shoe didn’t move, but her foot came out and left it behind. I also remember seeing her backpack out of the road in her yard from being thrown. This happened so quickly, but when I think about it, it is so slow, as if I can see everything. I stared at the shoe and backpack for a while, and I don’t remember anything after that, almost as if I blocked the rest of it out. That was a very traumatic thing for me and I barely knew the girl. But I do know that she ended up in a wheel chair, and everyday passing her house she would be going to school and my bus driver would honk and everyone would wave. I still remember the girls’ name. Her family had put up a wheel chair ramp outside of her house so she could get in and out. Sorry this was so long. The story reminded me of that and I thought I would write about it from a kid on the bus’s point of view.

Let’s just hope that whoever did this gets caught, and the people reading this will pay more attention to the roads when they are driving. Maybe even realize that hitting someone while driving doesn’t just affect that person and their family, but everyone around them as well.