SHAWANO, WI -The Shawano Police Department says they will not be filing charges or issuing citations after a child was hit by a vehicle in a business parking lot over the weekend.
Captain Brad Rabideau of the Shawano Police Department says the determination comes after interviews and witness statements.
“In some cases, unfortunately, an accident is an accident.”
According to the police report, a young child was hit by a vehicle in the El Tequila parking lot on Sunday evening.Rabideau says operating in a parking lot is different than operating on a roadway.
“There are very limited violations that could occur.”He says an example would be OWI, Reckless Driving, and Ordinance Violations.”
He says in this case, none of those turned out to be evident.
“The investigation showed that there is not probable cause that the driver was operating recklessly. He did submit to a blood test, but that blood was not tested because the officers did not detect any impairment.”
The report indicates that the driver of the vehicle was a 36-year-old Illinois man. He told officers that he drove to the front entrance of the building to pick up his girlfriend and hit the young girl. He told police that he immediately stopped, and parked his car.
A Facebook post by the child’s family says something different.
“This man was waved down to stop his truck but kept going until the older girl was banging on the hood of the car and everyone was screaming at him.”
Rabideau says it was not a hit-and-run.
“The witness statements that we have is that the individual never tried to leave the scene and it was not an intentional act.”
He says there was an incident several years ago when a child was hit by a vehicle on a city road and resulted in a fatality. He says in that case, there was not any probable cause to issue any charges or citations for the operator of the motor vehicle.
“Civil liability is not something we deal with,” Rabideau said.
“It is evident that the incident occurred, but there is some differences in witness statements in what actually occurred.”
According to the family’s Facebook post, the girl went under the tire and has a cracked collar bone.According to the report, the toddler’s mother, 19-year-old Rose Cantrell said her family was walking through to their car when the vehicle came around the corner at a high rate of speed and hit her daughter.
“Third-party witnesses indicated that the operator of the vehicle was not driving recklessly or driving fast and there was also information that the person that was hit was in the parking lot unattended. Everyone has maybe a little different perception of the scenario and part of our job is to decide and determine what actually happened.”
He says the information is on file but it is not being sent to the state. He says it is still the law to report accidents and that occurred.
“We have empathy for the family and we know that it is a difficult situation, but we do have to follow the law and we can’t just charge someone because we feel like it or because we think it should be.”
Comments