The 10-year- old girl hit down near her home, in Salem/Runaway Bay, St Ann, Wednesday, April 2, is making a strong recovery in hospital. Alexzandra Lee-Ann Pelz, 10-year-old grade four student of Runaway Bay All Age School has emerged from more than five days state of unconsciousness and has recovered enough to be taken from the intensive care unit at the University Hospital of the West Indies where she was taken three days after she was hit down at Salem on the North Coast Highway. She is now on the Children’s ward where she is still fed intravenously. The girl was hit down by a Toyota Corolla station wagon as she crossed the road having got off a bus she had taken from her school. There are conflicting reports about where she was hit with some reports that she had already crossed the road. The vehicle did not stop. Alex’s mother, Tina Martin who has been spending long hours with Alex at the hospital says Alex spoke for the first last week. The girl is able to converse well, she said. However, she says Alex appears not to have short term memory as she is forgetting things that happened even hours earlier. Doctors have indicated more neurological tests and scans even though a swelling of the brain has been reduced. On Sunday, Alex, as she is fondly called, was expected to undergo surgery on her right elbow which was fractured when she was hit by a car. She has several other injuries, including a broken leg. Family members are taking comfort in the sentiments of community members and a string of letters sent to the girl by her grade 4 classmates, at Runaway Bay All Age. Several of them send poems and drawings and said they missed her. Ms Martin says they are touched by the letters that she showed to the North Coast Times. She read out several of them. The girl is the only child for her mother and father Tina Martin and Leonard Bailey. Ms Martin said Alexzandra was born prematurely and there were predictions that she would be small and physically weak and that she may even have mental issues. “She proved them wrong,” Ms Martin said, stating that since the girl started attending Runaway Bay All Age she had placed first in her class, every time, from grade one to grade three and was fully involved in school in grade four. Ms Martin and the girls grandmother, Olive Jackson ‘Mama Bling’ as well as her father testified to Alex’s sharp mind and wit. From the day after the accident they were confident that she would pull through. They said Alex was a medalist in the JCDC speech competition last year when she won silver in her category, doing Louise Bennett’s ‘Cass Cass’. In fact, she said, Alexzandra was to perform Thursday, April 3, in a dance for the school and the afternoon the day before when she was hit down she had stayed after school for rehearsal. Meanwhile, area residents in Middle Street and other parts of Salem are angry over the investigations so far. Police were able to track the vehicle although it did not stop. The front bumper with the registration (licence) plate was torn off in the crash, and the car was located locked up some ten miles away on a back street in Discovery Bay. Police told the North Coast Times that the owner of the car said it had been driven away by someone unknown when he stopped that afternoon to assist a motorist on the Laughlands main road. Police said the driver who was a suspect following the accident, went to the St Ann’s Bay police station about 8:30 p.m. a full four hours after the accident and reported his car had been driven away. Police said the investigation is ongoing. However area residents said police must make an arrest, they said events have suggested that the insurance company was not informed until Ms Martin went to them with a report.
