Mother, child hospitalized after being hit by a car in Stansbury Park

STANSBURY PARK — Parents in Stansbury Park are frustrated and pleading for help from county leaders after a 38-year-old mother and her 11-year-old child were hit in a crosswalk Monday.

“We don’t have a school zone, we don’t have the proper crosswalk, we do not have crossing guards from the sheriff’s department, these are teachers on rotation trying to keep our roads safe,” said resident Kendra Parry.

According to the Tooele County Sheriff’s Office, the mother and child were hit shortly after 8:00 a.m. while walking to Bonneville Academy.  A vehicle making a left turn onto Montauk Lane struck the mother and child as they were crossing Village Blvd.

Both suffered serious injuries but were alert and talking while being taken by ambulance to a Salt Lake area hospital.

In a statement from Bonneville Academy, operations director Juliette Herrera says the school has teachers and staff helping with students at the crosswalk before and after school, “but they return to the school prior to the start of school – and we understand this accident happened shortly after they had left.”

Herrera goes on to say, “We believe this tragic situation highlights the need for a school zone and county crossing guards at this crossing in the future.”

Parray says she’s approached council members, the county’s roads division, and the sheriff’s office pleading for help in making safety improvements to the Montauk Lane and Village Blvd crossing.

“We have new development for housing, we have a really busy road out there, a high school out there, and in the morning particularly, it’s a recipe for disaster as we have people speeding through,” Parry said. “It is their responsibility to keep these children safe, they are community members.”

In April 2021, a traffic study was conducted on the intersection to determine if a school zone was needed, according to Tooele’s Assistant County Manager Brittany Lopez. That study ultimately determined a school zone wasn’t needed.

“Roads completed a study with their MUTCD (Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices) standards for school zones and crosswalks, and at that time, it didn’t warrant a full school zone crosswalk,” Lopez said. “What we did tell the school was, we’ll paint the crosswalk on the ground and provide the crossing flags but can’t make it an official school zone.”

In light of Monday’s double auto-pedestrian accident, and the growing concern over safety, as well as continued growth in the area.

Lopez says the county will commit to conducting another traffic study on the area to determine if a school zone designation is now warranted. If it is, the county says it will work with the charter school to determine how to pay for the crossing guards and lights.

“It’s worth looking at again, and we will commit to conducting a new study,” Lopez said.

And for the meantime, residents like Parry can only hope the county will act sooner rather than later.

“My plea is that they’ll actually do something, that they’ll put in a lower speed limit, that they’ll put in the crosswalks needed, that we will have trained crossing guards,”  Parry said. “Those things are necessary so that next month, next year, someone is not killed.