Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
ST. GEORGE — A 1-year-old died after being hit by his mother backing out of a parking spot Sunday evening, police say.
St. George Police responded to the incident in a residential area near the 1100 East block of 400 South in St. George just after 7 p.m.
A family function had been taking place at a home in the area when a woman went to leave in an SUV, St. George Police Lt. Curtis Spragg said. The woman was going to get pizza and planned to leave her 1-year-old son behind with other adults.
“There was a child behind the car,” Spragg said, describing the child as a “young toddler.”
As the woman backed the SUV out of its parking spot, she did not see that the toddler was behind her vehicle and reversed and ran over the child with her back left tire, said St. George Police Dept. spokesperson Lona Trombley.
“Our thoughts are with the family during the terribly tragic time. As always with these kinds of incidents, we encourage everyone to take a moment and think about what we can do to try to keep this from happening," Trombley said. "There are times when it’s a perfect storm and everything that can go wrong does go wrong. We can take these terrible things and make plans to keep it from happening again. Perhaps having another person outside the vehicle look out for children in the blind spots.”
Responding police arrived and immediately began performing CPR on the child while medical personnel from Gold Cross Ambulance were en route.
A witness at the scene said the toddler appeared limp as it was moved into an ambulance and rushed to Dixie Regional Medical Center a few blocks away.
