MIDDLEBURG, Fla. — On Friday afternoon, Travis Janiszewski said he was sitting at home, watching TV, when he looked out of his window to see his 8-year-old niece, Ellie, lying on the ground beside her bike.
It wasn’t until he rushed outside that he realized she’d been hit by a car. It happened as she was riding home from school.
“She was just screaming, a lot of blood was coming from the side of her head. She had been whacked pretty hard,” Janiszewski said.
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Janiszewski lives a few houses down from the intersection of Pine Ridge Parkway and Foggy Day Drive in Middleburg, where the Clay County Sheriff’s Office said the crash happened. Deborah Morillo lives on the corner of the intersection and sent us her security camera video that captured the crash at around 2:55 p.m.
“It looked like the car ran over her head,” said Morillo.
Morillo told us she’s lived in the neighborhood for 15 years and has never felt that the roads have been safe enough for kids riding to and from school.
“They need to have school guards,” said Morillo, “they need to have something because if this continues, somebody is going to die.”
Back in 2022, Action News Jax told you when a 12-year-old girl, also riding her bike, was hit by a car while crossing the road on Pine Ridge Parkway. The girl survived the crash, but Janiszewski tells us he’s seen many other cases where kids were almost hit in the neighborhood.
“I got my two nieces and nephews at home. They want to ride around the block, and now I can’t even [let them] do that. Why? Because people are not paying attention to these streets,” said Janiszewski.
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Action News Jax has requested the report of the crash, and we are waiting to receive it. We asked the Clay County Sheriff’s Office whether it has received recent complaints about traffic along Pine Ridge Parkway, and the agency responded with this statement:
“Pine Ridge is a long road and not typically an area we receive a lot of traffic complaints. However, we highly encourage our community members to report any complaints and concerns, and it will be looked into immediately.”
Janiszewski is calling on the county or the sheriff’s office to do something, whether it’s adding speed bumps, traffic signs, or crossing guards, to protect kids going to and from school.
“These kids are our lives, our futures,” Janiszewski said, “so what will happen when we keep just not paying attention?”
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