Texas Boy, 3, Killed in Hit-and-Run as Police Search for Suspect: 'Every Parent's Worst Nightmare'
Police are searching for the driver of a black pickup truck who allegedly struck and killed a 3-year-old boy in a Dallas parking lot Saturday in front of his siblings and grandparents before speeding away from the scene.
On Saturday at approximately 3:25 p.m., Jorge Neri, of Wichita Falls, Kansas, and his family were leaving a restaurant in a Dallas strip mall when the driver of a black Chevrolet LTZ pickup truck struck the child, the Dallas Police Department said in a statement obtained by PEOPLE.
The driver did not stop and left the scene, police said.
“When I got to [the scene], all I could see was my baby laying on the floor,” the child’s mother, Yvette Aguayo, told local station NBC 5.
“My baby could be alive if that man had stopped, to render my baby aid, he could have probably lived,” Aguayo told the station.
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The family told police that the driver hit the child, slowed down and then struck him a second time as he raced from the scene, local station KFDX/KJTL reports.
“It’s heartbreaking,” Det. Casey Clark of the Dallas Police Department said during a press conference. “I’m a dad, so it’s every parent’s worst nightmare.”
Authorities believe the registered owner of the truck, Ramon Garcia-Ruiz, 24, was the driver who allegedly struck the boy, police said in the statement.
On Monday night, police found the truck parked on a side street in Irving, police said in an updated statement.
Its rear license plate had been removed, local station CBS 11 reports.
The truck was found halfway between the accident scene and the home of Garcia-Ruiz, CBS 11 reports.
Aguayo and her children had traveled to Dallas to spend the weekend with family, she told CBS 11.
The mom was with her sister when Jorge was killed, CBS 11 reports.
“He had a heart of gold,” Aguayo told the station.
“And that the driver ran off. He left. He left my baby there to die,” she said. “He can’t live his life just like nothing happened. That man needs to be caught.”
The truck is described as a black Chevrolet Silverado LTZ with TX license plate LCM-2124, police said. It was last seen leaving the strip mall parking lot and heading northbound on Webb Chapel Extension Road towards Interstate 35-E.
Anyone with information on Garcia-Ruiz’s whereabouts can contact Detective C. Clark at (214) 671-0011 or by cell (214) 724-8769, or by email casey.clark@dpd.ci.dallas.tx.us with the Dallas Police Department’s Vehicle Crimes Unit.
