Boy, 7, in critical condition after being hit by semi on South Hydraulic

A 7-year-old boy was taken to the hospital in critical condition after being hit by a semitrailer truck on South Hydraulic, Wichita police said.

At about 2:40 p.m. on Saturday, police responded to an injury crash near the 1800 block of South Hydraulic near Linwood Park, Sgt. Brian Sigman said.

A witness said the boy was playing catch with some friends when one threw the ball toward the street. When the 7-year-old attempted to retrieve the ball, he was struck by the trailer of the truck, Vanessa Cooper said.

“I heard a loud thump, and not only parents but children and kids that were actually playing in the middle of a game flew to the scene,” she said. “After that, the screaming and the yelling overbeared everything else.”

The boy had “massive head injuries” and was transported to Via Christi Hospital St. Francis in “extremely critical condition,” Sigman said.

The driver of the semi, which belongs to an ice delivery company, was cooperative and stopped immediately after realizing he had hit the boy, Sigman said.

“He might have seen the child come out toward the street and then in his rearview mirror did see that he had struck the child,” he said.

The Kansas Highway Patrol is assisting in the case, “dealing with the semi driver and different regulations that they have,” Sigman said.

Sigman said that as of Saturday afternoon, police think the crash was “strictly an unfortunate accident,” and he does not expect charges to be filed.

“This small boy reached out to the street to get his football and didn’t realize the semi was where it was at,” Sigman said. “Kids will be kids, and I’m sure he wasn’t thinking.”

There was a youth football game going on at Linwood Park when the crash happened, and Sigman estimated there were “several hundred people” on the scene.

Cooper is the mother of five children playing for the Wichita Golden Bulldogs football team. The boy that was hurt was a player on one of the grade-school-age teams, she said.

“It really has me shook up,” she said. “It could have been one of mine.”

This story was originally published September 26, 2015 at 3:59 PM with the headline "Boy, 7, in critical condition after being hit by semi on South Hydraulic."