MILWAUKEE — A 14-year-old boy and two 15-year-old boys are hospitalized with critical injuries. They were in a stolen vehicle that crashed into a tree in the 4900 block of West Good Hope Road, near North 51st Street Tuesday around 6 p.m.
Photos from witnesses show the car split in half when it hit a tree on the front lawn of a home. The owner of the house was not home at the time. He spent Wednesday morning cleaning up debris from the crash.
“When I drove by, I couldn’t even tell it was a car,” said Marshall Patterson, who lives nearby. “It was dark and rainy, and I just saw twisted metal and car parts. That car had to be going more than 100 miles an hour. The fact that they were teenagers, not even old enough to drive, it just makes no sense.”
Sadly though, he’s not surprised something like this happened.
“I drive this stretch of Good Hope a lot,” Patterson said. “The speed limit is 40. But everyone goes at least 60 miles an hour. They call this Good Hope Road, but it feels more like a highway. It’s so bad over here, by 4 p.m. I make sure to be home and stay home.”
“It’s like a racetrack,” said Jeffrey Knueppel, who was in the area visiting old friends Wednesday. “I moved out of the city for this reason. It’s gotten so bad and it’s scary. You must drive so defensively here. Nobody does the speed limit. Everybody’s speeding. Nobody stops at the stop lights. Nobody uses their blinkers.”
More than 15 years ago, Jeff’s daughter Melissa was nearly killed in this area by a reckless driver. She was a passenger in her friend’s car.
“They were going through a green light and a guy ran a stoplight at over 70 miles an hour and broadsided them,” Jeff said.
Melissa spent months in a coma and still suffers side effects of a traumatic brain injury.
“She’s alive, thank God, and she just had my grandson,” Jeff said. “It’s truly a miracle.”
Jeff feels the pain of any family dealing with an injured child in the hospital, but in the case of this crash, he struggles knowing the car was stolen and driven recklessly.
“These kids don’t care,” he said. “To them, it’s a joy ride. The high speed, the careless behavior, then it ends with someone innocent getting killed. I honestly don’t know where we go from here, and I don’t see any mayor, governor, president or anybody fixing this because it starts at home. If you can’t fix what’s broken at home, you can’t fix it on the road.”
