Five members of a Richmond 6th-grade school basketball team were knocked down by a pickup truck in a hit-and-run accident Wednesday morning, suffering mostly minor injuries.
A Richmond Police Department spokesman said 14 boys on the Calvary Episcopal School basketball team had been practicing at YMCA facilities across Thompson Road from the school at about 8 a.m. As they crossed Thompson toward the school along with their coach, a northbound vehicle pulled forward to make a right turn onto Austin Street and struck five of the boys.
Calvary Episcopal School Director Malcom Smith said team members were struck despite the fact the basketball coach “has them raise both hands in the air” when crossing the street, “so their arms extend up above where the hood levels are.”
Smith said a parent who was in a car at the intersection and witnessed the incident told him a woman with dark hair, driving a small, dark-colored pickup truck, moved forward as the boys were crossing the street, stopped, and then moved forward again, striking them.
“I did see her strike the group, but I did see them bounce right back, as if she struck their back-packs,” the parent said in an email to Smith.
The coach yelled at the driver of the truck, saying something like “Lady, do you see these kids right here?” Smith said. “He got the kids over to the other side of the street,” and at that point the woman in the truck drove off.
Richmond Police Sgt. Lowell Neinast said injuries ranged “from small bruises to swollen ankles.” Smith said two of the boys required treatment – one for a sprained ankle and the other for an elbow so swollen that the boy’s arm may be fractured.
The department is asking that anyone who saw the accident or has any information about it contact Richmond police at 281-342-2849. Or, anonymous calls about the incident can be made to Fort Bend County Crime Stoppers, at 281-342-8477.
“We just need to talk to the driver,” Neinast said. “I don’t know if anything is going to happen to her.”
As for why the woman left the scene of the accident, “I don’t know if she thought that nobody was hurt or what she was thinking about,” he said, adding that she may have been frightened because “the coach kind of yelled at her.”
