A 3-year-old child was left in critical, unstable condition yesterday evening after being struck by a vehicle on the 3000 block of Thornapple Drive in northeast Columbus, just steps from a neighborhood church. Columbus police were dispatched around 6:25 p.m. following reports that a vehicle had hit the child, and the toddler was rushed to Nationwide Children’s Hospital.
The crash site sits adjacent to the Columbus Ghanaian Seventh-day Adventist Church at 3191 Thornapple Drive, a congregation serving Seventh-day Adventist and West African community members in the 43231 ZIP code, according to the church’s own information. A city dispatcher confirmed the child’s unstable condition and transport to the hospital, as reported by 10TV. Details on what led up to the crash, including whether the driver remained at the scene or whether speed or distraction played a role, have not been released.
Investigators Yet to Determine Fault
The Columbus Division of Police has not said whether the child was crossing within a marked or unmarked crosswalk, a distinction that matters under Ohio law. Under Ohio Revised Code § 4511.46, drivers must yield to pedestrians crossing within a marked or unmarked crosswalk when no traffic signal is present, and are barred from passing a vehicle that has stopped for a pedestrian, according to the Ohio Legislative Service Commission. Separately, Ohio Revised Code § 4511.48 requires pedestrians crossing outside a marked or unmarked crosswalk at an intersection to yield to oncoming vehicles and bars them from stepping suddenly into traffic.
It remains unclear whether the Columbus Division of Police Traffic Bureau’s Accident Investigation Unit, which handles reconstruction of serious-injury and fatal pedestrian crashes citywide, has taken over the probe. No citations or charges have been announced as of today.
A Pattern of Pedestrian Danger in Franklin County
The Thornapple Drive crash adds to a troubling run of serious pedestrian and vulnerable-road-user incidents across Columbus this month. Just hours earlier yesterday, a teenager was killed after being thrown from a vehicle in a crash on Roberts Road near Hilliard, a case Hoodline covered as it unfolded. Earlier in August, an e-bike rider was struck from behind on Columbus’s Courtright Road by a driver who fled the scene, and a hit-and-run on the Central Hilltop left another pedestrian hospitalized with the suspect still at large…