Young son of MMA fighter Marcus Kowal is dead after being hit by a driver suspected of DUI

The 15-month-old son of MMA fighter Marcus Kowal died Sunday, Kowal announced on Facebook, after being struck by a driver suspected of DUI in a hit-and-run accident the previous day in a Hawthorne crosswalk.

“About an hour ago, our baby was declared brain dead,” Kowal wrote of his son, Liam Mikael Kowal. “He tried to fight so hard. He even died at one point but they brought him back. He's a little fighter. His heart is still beating but his brain is no longer working.”

The post is accompanied by a photo of Kowal and Liam with the baby’s mother, Mishel Eder.

“Our hearts are broken and there's a void in my soul but we will get through this.”

On Saturday afternoon, Eder’s 15-year-old sister was pushing Liam in a stroller across the street within a crosswalk when the two of them were hit by a driver who attempted to flee, police told the Orange County Register. Witnesses followed her car and surrounded it about a block away, police said.

The baby initially had no pulse but police performed CPR until paramedics arrived and took him to County Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, according to the Register.

The girl suffered a broken leg.

The driver, identified by police as 72-year-old  Donna Marie Higgins, was arrested on suspicion of felony hit-and-run and felony drunken driving. The charges could be much more severe now that the young boy has died.

“This isn't easy to write but Liam is going to donate his organs, so that his little heart can make another child live and another set of parents not have to go through what we have to,” wrote Kowal, a Sweden-born Venice resident who owns Systems Training Center in Hawthorne, Encino and Westwood.

“Liam loved to share, and the person we were going to raise him to be would love to help someone else.”

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