A North Philadelphia mother is pleading for the driver who struck her 9-year-old daughter to come forward after the girl was seriously hurt in a hit-and-run crash in the city’s Tioga neighborhood. The crash happened around 8:30 p.m. Tuesday on the 3200 block of Germantown Avenue, near Westmoreland Street.
Investigators say a vehicle traveling northbound hit the child and then fled the scene. The girl, Zi-Yonnie Talley, was taken to a hospital, where she remained in stable condition as of Wednesday, when her mother returned to the scene.
“She keeps on crying and talking about she don’t want to to die, and I just want them to find whoever did this to my daughter,” Shanae Talley, Zi-Yonnie’s mother, said.
Talley said her daughter had been standing near the corner with her younger brother, older sister and friends when the vehicle came down Germantown Avenue. “It was swerving down Germantown coming towards Allegheny, then hit my daughter and the pole,” Talley said. “She flew from the sidewalk to the middle of the street.”
Zi-Yonnie suffered a broken leg and bleeding near her kidneys, according to her mother. “She’s doing OK; she’s just in a lot of pain with her leg broke, and she has bleeding along her kidneys and stuff,” Talley said.
The crash happened just yards from Zi-Yonnie’s school. She was supposed to begin school Monday but will now have to start with online learning as she recovers, her mother said.
Talley is also calling for additional speed cameras in the area. “I think they should have the same speeding cameras they have on Broad Street; they need to put on this little block too,” she said.
Police say they are still searching for surveillance video, witnesses and a description of the vehicle involved. Anyone with information is asked to contact police.
Reported by WPVI.
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