A 4-year-old Brandon Township boy is expected to make a full recovery from a fractured skull he suffered in a single-car accident in which the driver, his mother, was found to be intoxicated.
Oakland County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Harry Joseph, crash reconstructionist, said he will seek a warrant from the prosecutor’s office this week for charges against the woman including operating while intoxicated causing serious injury and child endangerment.
Lab results show the woman had a blood alcohol content of .13 percent. The legal limit is .08 percent.
According to police reports, deputies responded at about 2:18 p.m., Aug. 15, to a single vehicle rollover accident in the 1100 block of Hurd Road. At the scene, they found a Ford Explorer heavily damaged in the road and a small child lying on the ground away from the road and surrounded by adults and two other children.
The boy’s mother said she didn’t know what happened. She said she knew the brakes were bad and the car started to speed up rapidly and she couldn’t stop it. She lost control and rolled the vehicle and her son was ejected out the rear driver’s side window.
A witness said she was driving behind the Explorer on Hurd Road and the vehicle was going slow. As she began to pass it, she said the Explorer’s driver gunned it, then lost control, struck the embankment, hit a tree and rolled the vehicle three times. The 4-year-old was thrown from the vehicle and landed in the road.
A Hurd Road resident heard the car engine rev, then the crash. He ran out to the scene, then back to his house to get his wife, a registered nurse. The boy, who still had a life preserver vest on from a trip to the beach, was crying and telling his mother his head hurt. The parents had minor injuries and two other children in the vehicle, ages 6- and 7-years-old, were uninjured.
According to police reports, beer cans were observed just outside and inside the suspect’s vehicle, as well as a broken bottle of vodka. The father told deputies the family had just left the beach. He said he and his wife drank alcohol the night before and had a 40-ounce beer before going to the beach. They were also drinking at the beach.
Everyone in the vehicle was taken to Genesys Regional Medical Center in Grand Blanc, and the 4-year-old boy was transferred to Hurley Hospital in Flint for a fractured skull and bleeding on the brain.
At presstime, his current condition was unknown.