4-Year-Old Boy Miraculously Survives Hit-and-Run After Being Dragged Down Street

By Laura Stewart August 28, 2019 at 12:50pm

A Florida mother is demanding justice after her 4-year-old son was injured in a hit-and-run accident this month.

Jennifer Moore experienced the feeling every mother dreads when she discovered her son, Joseph Soto, was missing after going to pick him up from his usual bus stop.

“I waited at his bus stop like I was supposed to,” Moore told WFLA. “His bus came and he never got off the bus.”

The frantic mom was in for even worse news.

After speaking to the bus driver, she hurried to search for her son at the last stop the bus had made.

There, she found her son lying in the middle of the road, a crowd gathered around him.

Her son eventually told Moore what had happened — a blue pick-up had hit Joseph and driven off without stopping, dragging the boy down the road for several moments.

“When I turned the corner, my son was laying in the middle of the road with a group of people around him because a truck hit him and took off,” she recalled.

Horrified, Moore couldn’t believe that any driver would be so irresponsible and heartless.

‘They’re a coward, they’re an animal’: 4-year-old dragged down street in Pasco hit-and-run | @WFLAJeff has the mother’s reaction>> https://t.co/hQk8awfGrE https://t.co/dTPNZGZgxD

— WFLA NEWS (@WFLA) August 26, 2019

“They’re a coward, they’re an animal. They have no regards for the human race, period,” she said of the driver who hit her son.

Strangers who had gathered at the scene around the injured boy told authorities that the pick-up appeared to be a blue Chevy S-10. So far, no information about the driver is known.

Joseph was on his way home from his ninth day of school this year when he mistakenly got off at the wrong bus stop. Joseph remembered most of the events that led up to his accident, Moore told WFLA.

He said he remembered crossing the street when he noticed an oncoming vehicle.

“He stopped and looked both ways and nobody was coming, so he started walking and that’s when he looked again,” Moore said.

“He saw a blue truck coming and so he tried to run the rest of the way across the street. He said, ‘Mommy, it didn’t slow down and it knocked me over and dragged me on the ground and then I fell asleep.”

The accident left Joseph with a broken femur and severe road rash. However, the fact that the boy survived the incident at all is cause for thankfulness.

Moore said Joseph is recovering, and that all she can hope for now is that the driver will confess.

“To be able to run over a child, a small child, there’s no reason for it,” she said.

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