A Doctor’s Account of the Scene of a Fatal Hit and Run

Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times The backpack that Amar Diarrassouba, 6, was carrying lay on the sidewalk after he was fatally struck by a truck in East Harlem last Thursday.

Melanie M. Canon, a family doctor who lives and works in East Harlem, happened upon the scene last Thursday moments after a 6-year-old boy, Amar Diarrassouba, was struck by a turning truck and tried to save his life. She sent us this account.

Last Thursday morning, after dropping my 8-year-old daughter at school in East Harlem, I got back o my bike and headed home. I am a daily bike commuter, as is my daughter, and have been doing the same loop for years. I know the streets and the crossing guards. I pass the same kids walking to school with their grandmothers year after year. I smile, ring my bell or wave, “Hi, Ma.” In this daily ritual we become community.

I pedaled down 117th Street, a one-way residential street in a bustling neighborhood, pocked with potholes, and narrowed by double-parked cars.

As I approached First Avenue, I saw a boy standing in the middle of the avenue. A small boy lay motionless on the pavement beside him. The intersection was empty of cars, trucks, pedestrians, and I heard the standing boy yell, “Help!”

I jumped from my bike, leaned it against a light pole and ran over. The boy was face down on the pavement, and as I bent down to lift his small body off the ground, still supple and warm, I saw the blood puddling on the street.

“Is this your brot! her” I asked the older boy. “What’s his name”

“Amar.”

“What happened” I asked. The brother had no reply.

I moved the boy’s body out of the middle of the street, before the parade of approaching trucks and cars plowed over us, gently placed Amar on the sidewalk and turned him over. The little boy’s face was covered with blood, his eyes open and fixed; more blood flowed from his nostril.

As a physician, when I see bleeding I think, “Stop the bleeding.” I pressed my fingers against the nostril. The blood kept flowing. It was not a nosebleed. In work mode, I ran down the checklist of emergency life saving. I wiped his face; his pupils were nonreactive. He wasn’t breathing. I grasped his shoulders and cried, “Amar, Amar.” No response. I unzipped his jacket, unbuttoned the top of his shirt, checked for a pulse, and checked again. No pulse. Blood continued to pour from his nose.

Experience told me it didn’t matter if I did the chest compressions and resue breathing. All I could do at that point was stay right there with him.

Kneeling on the sidewalk with my patient, I sensed a crowd forming. I didn’t look up, my attention focused on Amar, but I could hear the crowd directing me: “Don’t move him.” “He’s breathing.” “He moved.” “Wait for the ambulance.” “Move the brother away from him.”

A girl in a gray sweater called 911. A teacher stopped on her way to the boys’ school, which was less than a block away. She knew the brothers, and pulled the older boy close. With her other hand, she started making calls, the tears flowing. The brother leaned into her and started crying as well. While we waited for E.M.S. that teacher never let go of this boy who’d just seen something no child â€" or adult, for that matter â€" should ever have to see.

The police and medics arrived, cleared the area, put up tape and took control. E.M.T.s whisked Amar’s wrecked little body into the back of the ambulance and to Harlem Ho! spital, w! here he was pronounced dead on arrival.

When I knew the older boy was in good hands, I jumped on my bike to pedal home. As I rode, I noticed my gloves, sneakers and bottom of my jeans were soaked with Amar’s blood and patched with clots.

People often ask me how I keep calm in such dreadful situations, how I keep thoughts of my own child and her safety from clouding my mind. For me, the anger and sorrow come later, as I reflect on the statistics that tell us that accidents like this are preventable.

We now know that Amar was hit by a tractor-trailer turning from congested, narrow 117th Street onto First Avenue. The driver of that huge truck said he hadn’t seen the boy, couldn’t see him, from the high perch of his mammoth truck. He didn’t hear the sickening thud, either.

This is where I come back to my training - not my medical training, but my training as a mother and community activist â€" where my sorrow and anger will drive me to act, to join my community in pushing for chage.

Trucks this size shouldn’t be on residential streets, especially as kids are walking to and from school. 
In this country, cars and trucks kill more children than guns do. We can do better, for Amar and for all of us.