Car hits child before Utica parade

Clark County

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September 4, 2012

Car hits child before Utica parade

NEWS AND TRIBUNE newsroom@newsandtribune.com The News and Tribune Tue Sep 04, 2012, 08:08 PM EDT

UTICA — A Utica toddler was expected to be released from Kosair Children’s Hospital on Tuesday where he had been hospitalized since Saturday after being struck by a vehicle about 9:23 a.m. before the start of the town’s annual Homecoming Parade.

According to a crash report from the Clark County Sheriff’s Department, witnesses told police 22-month-old Sammy Dunn was standing at the foot of a gravel driveway in the 300 block of Market Street near the intersection of Fourth Street, when a vehicle traveling northbound on Market Street veered off the right side of the roadway and struck him, knocking him into the street.

One witness said the vehicle, a white 2012 Chevrolet Traverse registered to Walnut Ridge Greenhouse Inc., of Jeffersonville, appeared to be traveling at a high rate of speed. But the driver of the Traverse, 60-year-old David R. Julius, of Jeffersonville, told police he was only traveling about 15 mph as he was driving through the neighborhoods watching residents prepare their vehicles and properties for the upcoming parade through town.

Julius told police he may have glanced off to the side of the roadway as he was traveling northbound on Market Street approaching the intersection of Market and Fourth streets, but he could not be certain. According to the crash report, Julius told police the only thing he could remember was an “orange blur” suddenly run out in front of his vehicle from the passenger side, causing him to hit his brakes and exit the vehicle where he saw a small child wearing an orange shirt laying in the roadway.

According to the Sheriff’s Department crash report, Julius said several of Dunn’s family members came to the scene and stayed with the child until emergency workers responded.

One of those witnesses told police as she approached the child he was unresponsive and appeared to not be breathing, so she began CPR until he started breathing on his own. New Chapel EMS responded to the scene and transported Dunn to Kosair with what Clark County Sheriff’s Department Major Chuck Adams on Tuesday described as “non life-threatening injuries.”

Julius, who was instructed by officers at the scene to go to the town hall and wait for further questioning, submitted to a blood test for alcohol and drug screening. Adams said Tueday those results had not yet been returned from the Indiana Department of Toxicology, but that Julius did not appear to be impaired in any way following Saturday’s accident.