By Donna Hales
Phoenix Staff Writer
Sat, May 17 2008
—
A Haskell man involved in the rescue of a 3-year-old girl walking across two lanes of traffic on West Okmulgee Avenue was upset Wednesday.
“It makes you want to slap some people up the side of the head and say, ‘wake up’,” said Mark Burgess.
A police report indicates that was the problem — the little girl’s mother and grandparents were not awake at 11:15 a.m. Tuesday. That’s when the child had unlocked the family’s front door and walked at least a half mile from the family home in the 800 block of Kershaw Drive and decided to cross West Okmulgee Avenue, the report states.
The 31-year-old mother told police she had stayed up late doing laundry, so she overslept.
Muskogee patrolman Ron Yates has filed a report in the incident with the Muskogee County District Attorney’s Office.
When Burgess and the other motorists found the child, she had no shoes on and wore a pink jacket and pants but no shirt, police said.
“I saw her running on the side of the road and slowed down before she ran into the lanes of traffic,” Burgess said.
He said some women in a car behind him also helped. The driver pulled her vehicle sideways to stop traffic. Police were called and they contacted a relative at the child’s home, Burgess said.
“She said her mother was asleep. We asked her if this (nearest house on West Okmulgee) was her home and she said, ‘Yes.’”
It wasn’t. They asked her about the next house, “and it wasn’t her house either,” he said.
She told the women who had stopped to help that she wanted a pink bicycle and some other items, but didn’t seem to know where she lived, Burgess said.
“She knew her name and her little brother’s name,” he said.
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