The family attorney for a 3-year-old girl who was hit by a Phoenix police cruiser in August 2016 has filed a lawsuit against the city.
In the family’s lawsuit, they accuse the officer and the city of negligence, asking for unspecified damages.
The lawsuit says the victim and her siblings pleaded with their mother to buy ice cream from the ice cream truck outside their home near 67th Avenue and Camelback Road. Their mother got them money and watched from the doorway as the children received their ice cream.
The mother says, in the lawsuit, that her daughter stepped from the curb, stopped in front of the ice cream truck, looked both ways and then started to eat her ice cream as she was walking.
The police cruiser then accelerated around the ice cream truck and struck the girl on the driver’s side.
The mother reports that the girl was dragged under the cruiser.
The family attorney says the girl has had several surgeries since the accident and had to have several pieces of her skull removed to allow space for swelling in her head.
At the time, the driver of the ice cream truck told ABC15 that he handed the girl her ice cream, turned his back to go back to the freezer and heard the crash.
Phoenix police said the 35-year-old female officer who struck the child was alone in the car and is extremely upset by what happened.
