HOLBROOK, MASS. (WHDH) - The mother of a 15-year-old girl who was hurt in a hit-and-run crash in Holbrook Wednesday afternoon is demanding justice for her daughter, who was left lying on the side of the road by herself when the driver sped away.
Heather McDonnell said her daughter, who is a sophomore at Holbrook Middle High School, had been dropped off by her bus, and was walking along the shoulder of North Shore Road around 2:30 p.m. when she said she saw a black SUV driving toward her.
“She looked down at her phone for a second and looked back up, and it was the headlight in the hood of the car. And she remembers the car hitting her, and rolling back, and going head first down on the ground,” McDonnell said. “She’s just screaming, ‘Mom, I just got hit by a car! I just got hit by a car!’ It’s like the worst call anybody could ever get.”
McDonnell said her daughter was thrown into the woods from the impact, with her belongings scattered across the road, but she was able to get another glimpse of the vehicle driving off.
“She crawled out and crawled to the street and she saw the vehicle driving off and taking a right at the end of the road. She was thankfully conscious enough, she was able to call me,” she said.
The teen was taken to the hospital. McDonnell said she has a concussion and is on crutches, and she’s home recovering just days before her 16th birthday.
“It’s taken a toll on her. She is sore everywhere. She keeps replaying everything in her mind and, you know, she just breaks down and cries. She just can’t believe that somebody hit her and drove off,” McDonnell said. “It’s traumatizing, it’s traumatizing for her. It’s the worst seeing your child in pain and you can’t do anything about it.”
Holbrook police are still searching for the vehicle involved in the crash. McDonnell said it happened near the bend in the road, away from homes, but she’s hopeful someone in the neighborhood might have surveillance video that could help investigators identify the driver.
“There’s no way that you hit her and didn’t know, you had to have heard something,” McDonnell said. “She’s petite. She’s only 4-foot-8. She’s just under 100 pounds, like you could have killed her and you just left her on the side of the road. They need to be found.”
McDonnell told 7NEWS her daughter’s bus stop had been moved in recent years to around the corner, where she needed to walk on the shoulder of the road where there is no sidewalk to get home. In the wake of the crash, her school and the bus company said she will now be dropped off at the end of her street.
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