On Sunday evening, a four-year-old boy was fatally struck by a pick up truck on the city’s southside. Xyaire Askew was hit by the pick up truck around 5:24 p.m. in the 8100 block of S. Harper Ave.
Advertisement
According to one of the neighbors, Kenneth Howard, “The truck hit him and then he fell, and then the back tire rolled over his head. I just started praying, and I just started to try and help out as much as I could.“
Relatives of the young boy say that he ran out into the street while playing with his family while he had been over visiting his father. Cheronda Morris who was his mother stated “Just seeing him it’s like I can’t take my baby back with me. Such an amazing person. He was so lovable, so lovable, and I love that boy to pieces, and I know he loved me back.”
“He’s four, you know? Not 14, not 40, four! It kind of hurts,” the boy’s grandmother, Yuvair Jones, said. “As a grandma, you just want to pick him up, take him home, but I can’t.”
Askew’s mother is now left heartbroken over the loss of her only son.
Advertisement
“Everybody’s going to leave and go home and, ‘I’m sorry,’ and all the condolences, but I have to stay with the trauma,” Morris said.
There were heavy hearts Sunday night outside of Comer Children’s Hospital.
“It hurts I’ll never have a moment with him again,” the boy’s uncle, Craig Jones, said.
“Seeing my nephew when he was at birth, and seeing him… I can’t believe it,” he boy’s aunt, Chellise Jones, said.
The driver of the pickup truck was placed into custody and was cited for failure to yield to a pedestrian, police said.
No further information about the crash was immediately available as police continue to investigate.
