Police are searching for a hit-and-run driver who struck a 9-year-old boy on a bicycle in the Kingman Park neighborhood of Northeast D.C. Friday.
Disturbing video shows a car speeding around a corner, right by Blow Pierce Elementary school, and clipping a child on 21st and Gale streets NE. It is not known if the boy is a student at the school.
He can be seen flying off the bike, then immediately getting back up and running over to his mother who was biking behind him.
"The car just came almost drifting around the corner so fast that my mind couldn't process exactly what was happening," the victim, Peter Dziekan, said.
We've got the news you need to know to start your day. Sign up for the First & 4Most morning newsletter — delivered to your inbox daily. >Sign up here.
Peter's mother, Ami Dziekan, was rounding a corner when she heard the impact.
"I was very glad to see him running at me at that point. I wasn't sure what we were going to see," Dziekan said. "This is where kids go to school and parents are walking with strollers."
Local
Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia local news, events and information
The driver who hit Peter never stopped. A suspect description was not immediately provided.
"A couple weeks before this I had to swerve to avoid someone who was speeding around that corner, too," Peter said.
D.C. police said Peter was treated at a local hospital for minor injuries. The Metropolitan Police Department is investigating.
"There's just absolutely no regard for the safety and well-being of anybody who lives in the neighborhood," resident Denise Fleming said.
The speed limit at the intersection is 25 mph, and there are stop signs in both directions. But Saturday evening, News4's Aimee Cho witnessed numerous cars ignoring those signs.
Some raced down the straightaway, and others barely slowed to a stop.
"Earlier this summer we had like a drive-safe roadblock. It was hit and destroyed by cars coming through here within a matter of days," Fleming said.
Just an hour before Peter was flung from his bicycle, another child was struck in front of a school in Congress Heights.
At a remembrance event Sunday for yet another child, 5-year-old Allison Hart, demonstrators held signs like "SAFER STREETS CAN'T WAIT" and children made chalk drawings at the intersection.
Allison died after she was hit by a car while riding her bike in Brookland at 14th and Irving streets NE.
"We need safe streets. People keep getting killed by drivers in the District, we know what needs to be done," Rachel Maisler, from the D.C. Bicycle Advisory Council, said.
