Most afternoons, Paisley Brodie calls her mother when she gets to the public library four blocks from her middle school on Capitol Hill. On Sept. 9, the call came when Deirdre Allen expected it, but her 12-year-old daughter was crying. “Mommy,” she said, “I just got hit by a car.”He didn't fully run the light, you see, he just drove into the crosswalk when the light was red, and she shouldn't have been there.
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Allen never saw the man who hit her daughter with a black Land Rover. A witness told police, and later The Washington Post, that the driver did not stop in time for the red light. After he hit Paisley, witnesses said, the man berated her for being in the crosswalk, claiming she had a red signal. Paisley, unable to walk, was taken to Children’s National Hospital. The driver left with a citation for colliding with a pedestrian, which can lead to up to 30 days in jail.
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The driver, Earl Darryl Curtis, of District Heights, Md., said in an interview that he stopped in the crosswalk once he realized the light was red and that it was Paisley who collided with his car, not the other way around.
“If I had ran the light, I would have run her over,” he said. “She damaged my car.” He went on to say, “I didn’t even see the girl. … The only thing they got me on is the crosswalk.”
Also he has 94 unpaid tickets.