Girl, 7, thrown out of SUV in Palmetto traffic crash, police say. 2 other kids also hurt
A 7-year-old Palmetto girl who was ejected from an SUV was one of three children injured during a crash Monday morning on their way to school.
At about 7:45 a.m., a family in a Chevrolet Suburban was turning left onto Second Avenue West from 10th Street West when it turned into the path of Honda Accord. When the two collided, it sent the Suburban spinning around.
A 7-year-old girl was thrown out of the Suburban, breaking through a rear side window and landing in the rocky grass area on the northwest corner.
The girl, who was conscious but crying, was taken by ambulance to Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg as a trauma alert, according to Palmetto Police Sgt. Garrett Makeever.
Her 8-year-old sister and 13-year-old cousin, weren’t ejected, but were also injured, according to police. Both girls were taken to Manatee Memorial Hospital.
The children’s mother, Noami Cruz, was trembling as she huddled nearby with her two other children waiting for police to complete their report so she could join her daughter and niece at the hospital. Her husband, she said in Spanish, had gone in the ambulance with their other daughter to All Children’s.
Cruz said she got out of the SUV as quickly as she could, struggling to get her seat belt unbuckled. Her daughter just kept crying out to her, “Mami, Mami.”
“I moved her over here,” Cruz said pointing to the sidewalk. “People stopped to help me then and told me that I shouldn’t move her until the ambulance got here.”
Marcel Wip, the driver of the Accord, was also shaken from the crash but was glad that the girl’s injuries were not worse.
“She was talking,” Wip said. “I was glad for that.”
He was upset about damage to his car, which he said had belonged to his wife, who died two and half years ago.
“It’s kind of hard when I lose everything that reminds me of her. That really hurts me,” Wips said.
