Tragedy Points Out Need for City Action

A tragedy came to our section of Kansas City North on Saturday.

There are links to the news stories below. To summarize, two kids were riding on a skateboard in the street when a car came over the hill and wasn’t able to stop before hitting them.

The eldest, 9-year-old Jordan Hale, died at the scene. The younger, 6-year-old Jesus Gonzales, was taken to Children’s Mercy Hospital with broken limbs and is in serious condition.

See news links:

http://www.kansascity.com/2014/03/22/4909006/youth-struck-killed-in-kansas.html

http://www.kctv5.com/story/25047343/child-struck-killed-by-van-in-ne-kcmo

Though we live a couple blocks away, we were unaware of the incident until seeing it in the news, since we were homebodies that evening. Based on the timing in the news reports, we must have gone through the intersection just minutes before it occurred, yet we didn’t hear anything of emergency sirens.

The news stories are unclear exactly where along the two-block stretch of Winn Road that the incident occurred. But people are forming a memorial on the northwest corner of the intersection of NE Winn Road and N Bellefontaine Ave. — signs, messages, cards, stuffed animals, hearts — all for the memory of Jordan.

Since I didn’t know either of the kids or their families, I won’t dwell on things that I don’t know, except to express my condolences to them, along with my prayers. My prayers are also for the innocent and unfortunate woman driving the van.

The accident highlights an issue we have had in the neighborhood for years. There is no place for kids to play on their skateboards, so the entire neighborhood becomes a place to play. They use local parking lots and streets. The front steps of Avondale United Methodist Church are often used, until they break the nearby bushes and scrape the paint off the handrails.

The suggestion of a skateboard park in nearby Cooley Park was suggested in church Sunday morning. That may or may not have prevented the accident Saturday. Even if there had been a park, the kids would have no way besides the streets to get there — the area has no sidewalks. That was also mentioned in church.  Surveyors came through a year or two ago, saying they were surveying for sidewalks. Yet we have heard nothing about when or where the sidewalks are supposed to be going in.

A sidewalk from the apartment complex to the corner store and Cooley Park might have prevented the accident. There is a lot of traffic there, and people walking in the street all times of the day and night.

We are certainly going to expect the city to pay more attention to our section of the city. The delays in things like sidewalks are doubtless due to the financing required for these projects, but those things can be figured out when the need becomes apparent, as Saturday’s tragedy makes evident.