CLAYTON COUNTY, Ga. — An 8-year-old girl and her mother are asking Clayton County Police why no one’s been arrested in the hit-and-run collision three months ago that seriously injured the girl, despite witnesses who identified the driver -- a 16-year-old boy, they say, from their neighborhood, driving his scooter.
A police spokesperson told 11Alive Monday that investigators don’t have enough to solve the case.
Candy Miller’s daughter, Noel, is about to celebrate her 9th birthday, and she is still wearing a neck brace. Three months ago Noel was in a hospital, in a coma with serious injuries from the collision -- injuries that included a broken neck. She was on life support. When she woke up, she was unable to walk.
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Noel’s mother said that as soon as Noel could talk again, Noel told her that it was the 16-year-old neighbor, on his scooter, who drove into her on a street near their homes on Aug. 18.
Noel and her mother don’t understand why Clayton County Police now say they are stalled and can’t solve the case.
“Well, like, he was texting on his phone,” Noel said Monday, “and he hit me, and I flew off my bike and slid across the ground.... And he told my friends that he was going to get his dad or my dad and he'd be back, and he rode off.”
Did he come back?
“No,” Noel said.
Noel's two friends who were with her and saw the collision told police the same account.
In all, there were three witnesses who identified the same 16-year-old driver from their neighborhood.
Monday, when 11Alive once again asked Clayton County Police for an update on the case, a spokesperson replied with an email, writing one sentence, “The investigators have exhausted all leads of this investigation.”
The spokesperson did not respond to follow-up questions.
Candy Miller wants to know what more evidence police need in addition to the three witnesses.
“Apparently what they (the witnesses) saw is not enough, I guess,” Miller said Monday. “I'm not sure, because they (police) won't tell me anything."
Miller said when a detective interviewed the children, the detective did not believe what they said about the 16-year-old texting, while driving his scooter, moments before they said he struck Noel.
“The detective personally said he knew for a fact that that wasn't true because he's rode a motorcycle before, and he said you can't text while on a motorcycle, which we all know you're not supposed to, but it doesn’t mean you can’t,” Miller said.
Door-cam video from minutes after the collision, at sunset that night, shows what Miller believes is the 16-year-old driving home and hiding his scooter and 20 minutes later his father driving him away in another vehicle. On that recording you can hear the sirens of the ambulance that was coming for Noel.
The boy's father told 11Alive, “No comment,” except to insist that his son was away, with his mother, so his son could not have been the one who hit Noel, despite what Noel and the others told police.
“Oh, I'm frustrated,” Miller said. “Really I'm just, like, astonished, really. Because I really am lost. I really don't know what to do about it.... They took a piece of her rib out and infused it in the back of her spine to reconnect it. And they put some rods in her, and a plate in her skull to, pretty much, hold her head back on. And that was a dangerous surgery because she could have got paralyzed, it could have went wrong."
And, Miller said, Noel could have been killed in the collision. But, so far, no one is being held responsible.
On Tuesday, November 15, Miller told 11Alive News that a detective on the case texted her, and assured her that he is doing all he can to establish probable cause to arrest a suspect using the strongest evidence possible to be able to secure a conviction.