Child hit by car
It is becoming an all too common story, and frequently one with a very sad ending: children being knocked down. Over the weekend, it happened again, and although the latest victim is recovering, the driver is still unidentified, and the child and his mother are still shaken from the experience.
Karl Malic, Knocked down off his bicycle
“When I wake up, I see like we going somewhere else, then I ask, this dah noh my home. Then they say, they wah take me to the hospital.”
Jacqueline Woods, Reporting
Seven-year-old Karl Malic is recovering from a head wound he received after being knocked off his bicycle around seven-thirty on Sunday night. Malic had just left his house situated on Trinity Street to go and buy for his uncle. But as he reached the top of the lane and started to ride across Central American Boulevard, a brown vehicle hit him.
Karl Malic
“I di ride to go across the boulevard to go by the shop then same time the vehicle di come and it knocked me down.”
Jacqueline Woods
“You rode across the boulevard?”
Karl Malic
“Yes, ma’am.”
Malic was thrown to the pavement and hit the back of his head, losing consciousness. He says he woke up inside the driver’s vehicle and that the man took him to the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital and just left him there. His mother, Marcia Pope, says she was looking for her son, and it was not until one this morning that she found out he was at the K.H.M.H..
Marcia Pope, Mother
“Well I wish the person identify him or herself to me. When I got to the hospital, the person that knocked him down wasn’t even there either. I guess he left already because according to him, the same person that knocked him down took him to the hospital. But I couldn’t get any more information who the person was or what was the person’s name.”
“He was on a small bicycle and I don’t even know what happen to the bicycle either because I no even see the remains of the bicycle.”
Pope says she does not know why her son’s head was not X-rayed to see the extent of his injury, only that she was advised to take him back to the hospital if he started feeling sick.
Marcia Pope
“From he come home this morning, he constantly talking about headaches and once spell he almost fall down because he became very dizzy.”
Jacqueline Woods
“So you plan to take him back to the hospital?”
Marcia Pope
“Yeah, if he continue like that because they tell me that if he continue to feel any kind of dizziness to take him back to the hospital.”
In the past two months, at least five children in Belize City have been injured in traffic accidents. The National Committee for Families and Children say they are concerned.
John Flowers, Programme Coordinator, N.C.F.C.
“We here at the N.C.F.C., in view of recent developments have spoken with personnel from the Transport Department to look at how we can address this matter in a coordinated and strategic manner. Because traffic accidents, as you know, whether in the city or whether on the highways, are essentially the number one killer for people whether adults or children. And so to actually deal with this issue we need to attack it at the core.”
A Plan of Action has not yet been formulated, but News 5 understands that it will include an extensive educational campaign that targets parents, schools, motorists, and the general public.
At last Thursday’s meeting between N.C.F.C. and the Transport Department it was proposed that a working committee be formed to address the problem of child safety in traffic. Committee members will include N.C.F.C., the Transport Department, the Police Department, and the Traffic Department of the Belize City Council. During the meeting, Joan Musa, Director of the Belize Council for the Visually Impaired also offered services to train transport officers on how to carry out basic screening of eyesight of those applying for driver’s permit.
