‘I just want to put my baby to rest,’ says mother of boy hit by car

If her son Alvin had survived the injuries he sustained on Saturday night, Eliza Gunter said Tuesday, he would be feeling bad for the woman who hit him with her car.

“He’s not an angry kid,” she said of her 11-year-old son. “He’d have found out the facts of what happened, and he’d be crying because she’s sad. He’s a very loving kid.”

Alvin died Monday afternoon at the hospital, police officials said. Gunter said she has heard numerous accounts about what happened.

“Right now, I’m so up in the air from all of it,” she said.

Her 12-year-old son, Jessie, told her he and a friend were coming down 13th Street when they began being harassed by dogs. Alvin and a friend were “kicking the dogs back” to get free.

Her older son and his friend pushed the button for the pedestrian crosswalk at 13th and Erie and crossed with the green light. Alvin and his friend ran after them.

When Jessie turned around to look back, Alvin’s friend “was coming out of the air” after being hit by a car, Gunter said.

Jessie “didn’t see Alvin” until the car had continued traveling west, she said. Jessie ran to Alvin and heard him say, “Jessie, help me!”

But then Alvin closed his eyes and stopped breathing.

He was taken to a hospital, where he died at 3 p.m. on Monday, said Officer Charley Davidson, a spokesman for the Wichita Police Department.

The woman driving the Chrysler 300 when it struck the boys in the 2900 block of 13th Street looped back around and returned to the scene of the collision, police have said.

The second boy hit by the car is still alive and remains hospitalized.

Police have offered a different account of what happened, Gunter said. But seven different people have told her the light for the pedestrian crosswalk was red for vehicle traffic and that the boys crossed with the green light. The boys told her that, too.

“I just want to put my baby to rest,” Gunter said. “If it was an honest mistake, it was an honest mistake. But pay attention!

“These kids don’t watch for us. We have to watch for them, no matter how old they are.”

Alvin loved football and played for the Wichita Bulldogs in the Greater Wichita Athletic League. His funeral will be held on April 1, Gunter said, but the time and place have not yet been determined.

This story was originally published March 21, 2017 at 5:36 PM with the headline "‘I just want to put my baby to rest,’ says mother of boy hit by car."