Driver Fleeing Site of Crash Hands Infant to Bystander : Collision: The 2-month-old girl and five others are injured in the Costa Mesa accident.

A driver fled the scene of a crash Thursday after handing a critically injured 2-month-old girl in his car to a bystander, police said.

Five passengers in one car and the driver of the second car were injured in the 4:05 p.m. collision at Sunflower and Hyland avenues, police said. Police said that according to witnesses, both drivers appeared to have run their stop signs.

Investigators said the man who fled was driving a Lincoln Mercury west on Sunflower about 40 m.p.h. when it collided with the front end of a southbound Lincoln Continental traveling about 20 m.p.h.

After the accident, witnesses told police, the driver pulled the baby girl from the car and handed her to a stranger before running west on Sunflower. He remained at large, and police were looking for him.

Scott Thackrey, 23, of Anaheim said he was talking to a friend when he heard the cars collide and saw the Mercury spinning five times down Sunflower before coming to a stop.

Thackrey said he ran toward the Mercury and that the driver, without saying anything, handed him the bloodied infant. As the driver ran off, Thackrey said, he cradled the child in his arms and saw she was not breathing and turning blue.

Carrying the child to a nearby patch of grass, he began administering cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

“It was a real shock,” Thackrey said. “In about 10 to 20 seconds she began breathing.”

The infant, along with a 17-year-old girl and a 3-year-old girl, both of whom had been passengers in the Mercury, were taken to UCI Medical Center in Orange, said Police Investigator Steven Rautus. All of them are from Santa Ana, but police did not release their names.

The baby girl was in extremely critical condition with a skull fracture, according to police and a UCI clinical coordinator. The other two were treated for facial cuts and head injuries, police said.

Two other passengers in the Mercury, Maria Perez, 27, of Santa Ana and Alexandria Gonzales, 20, of Santa Ana, were taken to hospitals for treatment of scrapes, police said.

The other driver, Ronnie Renish, 59, of Costa Mesa was treated at Fountain Valley Regional Hospital and Medical Center for cuts and a head injury and was released.

Police did not immediately know if the fleeing driver, whose name they did not release, was related to the infant or other passengers.

Rautus said police are investigating the accident as a felony hit-and-run, but “if we find negligence on behalf of the parents we will pursue charges” because the children in the car were not wearing seat belts.

California state law requires children under 5 to be strapped into a federally approved safety seat when they are in a moving vehicle, Rautus said.

This is the second time in less than a week that a child who was not wearing a seat belt was seriously injured in a traffic accident. On Saturday night, two brothers, ages 2 and 7, died in a traffic collision in Orange when they were thrown from the car their father was driving.

“Use the child seat harness,” Thackrey said. “There’s nothing more you can say.”