By Robert Tomlinson
News Director
THREE RIVERS — A local boy is in the process of recovery following a hit-and-run incident that occurred while out on his scooter Friday.
According to the Three Rivers Police Department, the incident occurred near the intersection of South Grant Avenue and Hill Street Friday afternoon, when 10-year-old Landon Yoder was reportedly struck by an unknown white vehicle while riding a new electric scooter, with the driver fleeing the scene without stopping to render aid or provide information.
Yoder sustained injuries, including a concussion, road rash on multiple areas and two black eyes, in the incident, and was briefly hospitalized, according to his mother, Casie Rhodes. He is currently recovering at home, with Rhodes saying he is “in good spirits.”
Rhodes described her son as an energetic child, into sports and video games.
“He’s just a very smart kid, very funny, very sweet,” Rhodes said.
The incident occurred on the same day as Yoder’s 10th birthday, in which he got a new electric scooter as a surprise gift the day prior. Rhodes said they revealed the gift to him a day earlier so they could go over how to be safe while riding it.
“We got him this scooter to encourage him to be outside a little bit more,” Rhodes said. “We looked into this scooter, we looked into all of its safety features and it was rated for eight years old and up. We did a lot of research on it, we got him a helmet and his elbow pads and knee pads and wrist pads, and we gave it to him the day before his birthday so that we could take him outside and go over all the safety rules and where he could and could not ride it and watching for cars and being on the sidewalk and things like that.”
Rhodes said Yoder wanted to ride the scooter to school on Friday, but the rainy weather washed those plans out. However, after school, with the weather a bit nicer, Rhodes said her son wanted to try it out again.
“When he got home from school, he walked in the door, he said, ‘Mom, can I go ride my scooter the path that I would take to school?’ And I said, ‘That’s fine,’” Rhodes said. “He knows to stop at the stop signs and look for cars. We’ve been teaching him that since he was really little, since he could ride a bike.”
She was able to keep track of Yoder via the Life360 app while she worked from home, and she said her son was out for about 45 minutes, going up and down Hill Street. The incident reportedly happened around 4 p.m., and Rhodes said bystanders were soon there to care for Yoder and make sure he was okay.
“He has his cell phone, and I had a gentleman call me at 4:08 p.m., and he said, ‘I have your son here, it looks like he crashed his scooter,’ and I said, ‘I’ll be right there, I know right where he is,’” Rhodes said. “We jumped in the truck, and we drove down there, and he was in the front seat of some nice lady’s car, pretty banged up. As soon as we saw the scooter, we knew that he was pretty banged up.”
At first, Rhodes had thought it was just a minor crash, however, on the way home, Rhodes said Yoder told her, “Am I dreaming?”
“I said, oh no, we’re going to the hospital. That sounded like a concussion to me,” Rhodes said.
It took Rhodes and doctors three hours to get Yoder to calm down at Three Rivers Health after the incident before, Rhodes said, he told her, “Mommy, a car hit me.” As soon as he said that, Rhodes recalled, the hospital called police.
Rhodes said she and her boyfriend had suspected it was a serious crash 20 minutes before Yoder told them, after taking a closer look at the scooter. The front tire, she said, was ripped off the bolt, there were scrapes along the bottom of the tire, the handlebars were bent, and the deck of the scooter was “all bent up.”
“We all said, there’s no way that this was just him falling off of it,” Rhodes said. “So, it was an indicator that it was run over. And then when we were able to go back to the scene for the police to look, you could see where the scrape marks were. There were bits of his scooter in the road.”
The incident is still under investigation by Three Rivers police, and the driver and the vehicle have not been located as of yet. Yoder is still recovering from her concussion, and she said the outpouring of support from the local community has been a positive through their tough time.
“He had lots of friends come visit him on Sunday and brought him birthday presents and things for him to do so he wouldn’t be so bored, so that was really nice,” Rhodes said. “The amount of outreach that I got from this was just so beautiful and it really helped me feel like I am part of the community, even though I’m so quiet. It was really nice that we had strangers come by with snacks and gifts for him and they’re doing this parade and it’s just such a beautiful thing.”
That parade was a birthday parade, organized by local resident Katie Jones, who got permission from Rhodes to do so. Dozens of vehicles, including some motorcycles and a food truck, paraded past their house Tuesday afternoon to show their support for Yoder in his recovery and give him the birthday celebration he wasn’t able to get.
“It warms my heart because despite the fact that this one person did this horrible thing by fleeing the scene, all of these people are coming together to make sure that my baby feels good, and that he still gets to have a good birthday,” Rhodes said.
She said she’s hopeful the person who hit her child comes forward, and that someone knows something that could lead to an arrest.
“I just don’t understand why you wouldn’t stop, unless you had, I don’t know, maybe somebody had a warrant or an expired license or something else that would have been worse, because accidents happen, and people don’t always get charged if you accidentally hit somebody, so it was like, why, why wouldn’t you stop?” Rhodes said. “I absolutely hope they get caught.”
In the meantime, Rhodes said she hopes that to prevent something like what happened from happening to another child, that there would be more speed patrols on Constantine Street and an expansion of the sidewalk system in the neighborhood.
“I would like to see the city look at the sidewalks here. I don’t know why my side doesn’t have a sidewalk, but it’s common in some parts of this neighborhood where there’s not sidewalks on both sides,” Rhodes said.
Those with more information on the incident are asked to reach out to Three Rivers Police at 269-278-1235 or Silent Observer at 616-774-2345.
Robert Tomlinson can be reached at 279-7488 or robert@wilcoxnewspapers.com.
