Latino Parents Outraged After Fire Director Plows Over 3 Children Walking Home From School in New Brunswick

Hundreds of mostly Latino children, parents and residents stormed a City Council meeting Wednesday evening to demand safer streets for pedestrians a day after the city’s fire director struck and injured three children with his sport utility vehicle.

No charges have been filed and an investigation is continuing after Fire Director Robert Rawls, 56, struck the three children with his city-owned vehicle, officials said. The children — two 14-year-old girls and a 6-year-old boy — were hit about 3:34 p.m. as they were crossing Livingston Avenue on their way home from school. All three were taken to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick.

Rawls has not been charged with a crime or issued a ticket. The Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office is investigating the accident.

Accident brings attention to ‘road diet’ plan

The accident touched a nerve in the city’s large Latino community, which is largely Mexican.

The residents, exasperated by speeding vehicles who don’t yield to pedestrians, as well as a lack of crossing guards, came out in droves Wednesday evening.

More than a hundred of them, mostly children between 5 and 12 years old, packed the tight City Council chambers while 250 more adults waited outside on the steps of city hall. They held signs saying: “We need justice!” and “Speed humps!”

Outisde the crowd chanted in Spanish: “We’re here, and we’re not going!”

Residents who spoke at the meeting talked about near-misses on Livingston Avenue and French Street. Two speakers teared up saying that felt that their concerns weren’t being heard.

“There’s gotta be some changes,” said Alonso Urena, 36, a father of three who lives in North Brunswick but works in the city, who stood outside city hall with the American and Costa Rican flags around his shoulders. “Kids are getting killed on the roads because there is nobody to watch them when they get off school. There has never been enough crossing guards.”