By Ty Tagami
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
ATLANTA — The driver who hit a 10-year-old boy crossing a highway near a Riverdale elementary school early Wednesday said he begged onlookers at a nearby bus stop to help give the child CPR, but most of them ignored him and got on the next bus.
“We’re in a mean world,” a distraught Willie Heath Jr. told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. As he was driving to work in his 2005 Chrysler 300 sedan he struck Artavius Hall of Riverdale just before 7 a.m., according to a police report.
The officer who wrote the report said Heath had just passed through a green light when the boy stepped into Ga. 85 without the protection of a crosswalk.
The boy’s dark clothing --- from his black sneakers to his black woolen cap --- and the lack of streetlights may have contributed to the accident, the officer wrote.
The driver was not charged with any offense, a Clayton County Police Department spokeswoman told the AJC.
Artavius was with his younger brother, who was not injured.
Several other children had been standing with the boys in a median and also got across the street safely, said the police spokeswoman, officer India Smith. The speed limit on that stretch of highway is at least 40 mph, she said. “Usually, it’s very busy on that street.”
Artavius was taken to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston and was in critical condition Thursday, a hospital spokeswoman said.
The incident occurred about a mile south of Church Street Elementary School in Riverdale, but Smith could not say whether the boy was headed there. He was struck near a C-Tran bus stop, Smith said.
Heath, of Jonesboro, told police he heard a “thud” and stopped his car to check it out. He found the boy lying in the road, unconscious. Heath told the AJC that he didn’t know how to administer CPR, so he called over to the bystanders at the bus stop.
“I was begging for help,” he said. “They got on their bus and left.” He said drivers sped by, honking their horns, and he feared being hit himself.
But he said two people from the bus stop did ultimately help. One of them ran to a nearby fire station, he said.
Heath, 42, works in shipping and receiving at a building supply company, has been married 20 years and has five children of his own. He said he went to Egleston but hospital workers wouldn’t let him see the boy.
“I don’t know if the parents are mad at me,” he said. “I want to pray with them.” He said that stretch of Ga. 85 needs lights and sidewalks, but added that he’s not blaming the government for failing to provide them.
Heath said his pastor had come to his home to pray with him. Heath was speaking to the AJC on his cellphone outside his house and was about to go inside and tell his children what happened.
“OK,” he said. “Let me go and talk to my kids.”
Copyright 2010 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution