MILWAUKEE — An elderly woman is recovering with serious injuries after she and her special needs son were run over near 19th & Grant Streets.
Mary, 75, and her son Nick, 37, were crossing the street on Aug. 14. She waved a vehicle to go through the intersection, but the driver didn't move. She decided to go across the street, and when they reach the middle, the driver takes off barreling into the two of them.
"When they got directly in the middle of the street, he punches on the gas and a direct hit," Paul Reyes said. "Then I see them go flying 20 feet."
Reyes is Mary's son. He got a call from the nearby bar about the crash.
"I ran to my mother, and she was laying on the ground bleeding," Reyes said. "There's a puddle of blood around her head and she wasn't moving."
Nick was able to get up with only a few scrapes and went into Anna's Tap out of confusion of what to do. He has Down Syndrome and is unable to speak.
"You see the way he looks at his mom? That's his whole world," Arlene Pham, Anna's Tap manager said. "She's with him all day, every day, his whole life. What's going to happen now? Who's going to take care of him?"
Anna's Tap caught everything on surveillance camera. The bar is your quintessential Milwaukee pub; everyone inside is tight knit. So they knew it was Mary.
"We're all pretty close here," Pham said. "We see them both get hit like that. I had tears in my eyes. I couldn't believe it."
Pham and other witnesses were upset with how Milwaukee Police handled the situation once they arrived.
"I don't understand why the police dealt with it the way they did," Pham said. "There was no breathalyzer. They didn't search his car. We had to force one of the police officers to watch the [surveillance] video. Why wouldn't he want to see this? I don't understand."
Milwaukee Police did not respond for comment to TODAY'S TMJ4. The District Attorney's office only say there are possible charges for the driver.
"Police say he didn't do anything wrong," Reyes said. "It's a traffic accident. He'll get a ticket for driving with no license, driving with no insurance and no seat belt. I was thinking, was he drunk? Did he fall asleep at the wheel? Was he on drugs or on his phone?"
