A Parent’s Worst Fears Come True : Hit-and-Run Driver Strikes Down 11-Year-Old Boy as Stepfather Watches, Powerless to Prevent It

It is every parent’s nightmare: a child crossing a street, a fast-approaching car, a sickening impact, blood on the asphalt. For Jose (Tito) Tavera, the nightmare came true when he saw his 11-year-old stepson, Anthony Marin, struck down by a hit-and-run driver in the Harbor Gateway area.

Even now, four days after it happened, Anthony’s parents still don’t know how the nightmare will end. Their son remains in a coma at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center with serious brain injuries.

“I keep seeing it over and over and over,” said Tavera, 27, a burly construction worker who has raised Anthony since the boy was 6 months old. “I’m just getting to the point now where I don’t start crying every two minutes.”

“He’s going to be OK again,” Anthony’s mother, Dolores Moran, 29, said of her son. “In my heart I know that. We’ve just got to keep faith.”

The ordeal began Sunday about 4 p.m., when Anthony was roller skating on the sidewalk in front of his parents’ apartment in the 1600 block of 227th Street, a residential neighborhood of apartment buildings and single-family homes. Jose Tavera was across the street from the apartment, working on a car, when he saw Anthony skating toward the intersection of 227th and Western Avenue.

Anthony was “grounded” at the time for being irresponsible with his bike--he had left it outside unlocked, Tavera said--and Tavera called out to him to come across the street and explain himself. Tavera said Anthony looked both ways, a rigidly enforced rule in the family, Anthony’s mother said, and then started across the narrow street, which was crowded with parked cars.

Just then Tavera heard a car coming up the street behind him. He turned and saw a charcoal gray, low-riding, late-model Japanese import sedan approaching at a relatively high rate of speed for the narrow street--about 35 m.p.h., Tavera said. He turned back toward Anthony to warn him, but it was too late. Tavera said the car didn’t slow down; there were no skid marks on the asphalt.

“I was 15 feet away from him,” Tavera said. “I saw him get hit and fly up in the air. I saw a piece of one of his skates fly off. Then he fell down on the car hood. And the guy just kept going.”

Tavera screamed out his stepson’s name. Across the street, Anthony’s 7-year-old half-sister, Felicia, who also saw her brother get hit, began screaming. Dolores Moran, who was in the family’s upstairs apartment with Anthony’s 5-year-old half-brother, Joshua, heard the screams and ran down the stairs.

Tavera chased the car, yelling for it to stop. The driver hit the brakes and Anthony rolled off the hood and fell onto the street, bleeding from a gash on his head. Bloodstains are still visible at the spot.

“He (the driver) wasn’t slowing down to stop,” Tavera said. “He just wanted to dump Anthony off the car and get away.” Which is exactly what happened, police said. The driver swerved around the 90-pound boy lying in the street, while Tavera, chasing him, pounded on the car trunk and screamed for him to stop. He didn’t. He headed west, ran a stop sign at Western and 227th and turned right. He slowed down after the turn, looked back at Tavera, and then took off.

Tavera described the driver as a male Latino in his late 20s or early 30s. He was alone in the car.

When Tavera turned back to his stepson he saw that the boy wasn’t breathing. He and a neighbor, John Brooks, administered cardiopulmonary resuscitation and Anthony started breathing again. The boy was later taken to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.

He has not regained consciousness, his parents said. Tavera said Anthony’s injuries are deep within his brain, and cannot be repaired surgically.

“He’s got to do it all on his own,” Tavera said. “They (the medical staff) said all they can do is make him comfortable and help him as he goes along.”

Anthony’s mother said her son has responded to light and has moved his arm and leg, but it is too early to tell if he suffered permanent damage. Tavera said Wednesday that Anthony seems to respond to the voices of family members.

“Those are good signs,” Tavera said.

LAPD Detective Robert Jimenez, who is investigating the case, said that based on partial license plate information provided by Tavera, police have identified a car fitting the description of the one that hit Anthony. But he said that when officers went to the registered owner’s address, neither the car nor the owner was there.

“I really can’t say yet if it’s the right car,” Jimenez said, adding that the investigation is continuing. He said police are investigating the case as a felony hit and run.

“I just hope they catch the guy,” Tavera said. “He should pay for what he did.”

Meanwhile, Anthony’s classmates at Meyler Elementary School on West 223rd Street have sent the injured fifth-grader handmade get-well cards.

“We are losing a lot of kickball games without you,” Griselda Rangel wrote.

“I hope you will not chase the nurses,” wrote Nicole Granadino.

Allan Woods, Anthony’s teacher, said his students were not aware of the seriousness of Anthony’s injuries when they wrote the get-well cards. Now that they understand, he said, their mood is more somber.

“They are thinking positively and praying for him,” Woods said. Woods described Anthony as a “very popular, well-liked” boy and “a very good athlete.”

Anthony’s mother said he dreamed of being a professional football player someday.

“I hope it can still come true,” she said.