By LYNETTE HAALAND, Four Points News
Trey Dickerson will not forget his early-morning run last week in River Place anytime soon. That’s when he came face to face with a driver, separated only by her windshield.
The 17-year-old Vandegrift High School senior took a neighborhood run Oct. 30 around 6:45 a.m.
It was dark, rainy and foggy. Trey was not wearing reflective clothing nor did he have earphones on at the time. He had run to the front of River Place and was returning, a path he had been taking for many months, on and off.
“As he was crossing the driveway that leads to the retail shops and medical offices, a car was turning and hit him pretty solidly on the legs,” said Kerry Dickerson, Trey’s mom.
Thankfully he was not hurt, she said.
“(But) as he was hit, he had to brace himself on the hood of the car with his hands, making eye contact with both the woman in the car and her child in the back seat,” Kerry said.
Trey told his mom that the driver had slammed her brakes on, stopped momentarily, and then drove on without speaking to him or checking to see that he was okay.
Kerry was “absolutely furious” when Trey got home and he shared with her what happened.
“I just can’t believe that a mother with a child in the back seat would decide to drive on, and not stop to check the welfare of the person they had just hit,” Kerry said.
The only details that Trey could remember were that the car was a silver sedan, driven by an adult female.
The Dickerson’s have lived in River Place since 1997, minus two years in Tokyo and two years in France. Kerry encourages people to be careful.
“There have been so many hit-and-run incidents in Austin, and so many accidents in River Place,” she said. “After all the accidents in River Place lately, people need to be paying attention.”