Witness recounts deadly South Bend hit-and-run crash
SOUTH BEND, Ind. - A hit-and-run crash in South Bend Tuesday afternoon leaves a family coping with the loss of a six-year-old girl. One witness who rushed to the scene recounts what she saw.
A family member confirmed to ABC 57 News that the girl killed in the crash is six-year-old Maliyah Davis.
EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: A neighbor who lives right at the corner of O’Brien Street and Vassar Avenue caught South Bend’s deadly crash with his security camera--that left a six-year-old girl dead Tuesday afternoon.
“Nobody should have to witness that,” said Krystal Saros, who lives a few houses down the street.
A Chrysler 300 was traveling southbound on O’Brien Street a little after 2:30 p.m., when she t-boned a Durango driving eastbound on Vassar Avenue—filled with a grandma and her two grandchildren.
For ABC 57's initial breaking news coverage, click here.
“I hear the tires squealing. I hear bang. I jump out of my vehicle. I come running down here, halfway to the scene,” said Saros.
She called 911 as she ran.
“The truck burst in smoke. It started smoking from the back, the underneath. It’s on its side,” she said.
“We get down here. There’s an elderly woman on the inside of it…She’s hollering I have kids in here. I have kids in here!” said Saros.
The young boy in the backseat, the woman’s grandson, walked away without a scratch.
“He had no bumps, no bruises, no marks, nothing wrong with him,” said Saros.
His six-year-old sister, however, didn’t make it out alive.
“Very graphic. I’m 28 and I’ve never in my life witnessed anything like that,” said Saros.
Another witness says the driver of the Chrysler looked at the horrific scene and took off.
“What if that was your daughter or your child or anybody’s child? I don’t understand why she took off,” said Saros.
As neighbors lay teddy bears where, hours ago, they gently placed that young girl, Krystal Saros says what she saw will forever be engrained in her memory.
“No mother should have to bury their child and have to witness something like that, and a mother of children, that crushed me, that will bother me,” she said.
A family member has already set up a gofundme page to raise donations for Maliyah's funeral expenses.