The names of the driver and the pedestrian in last night’s accident have been identified by University Park Police. In a statement to The Daily Campus, UP Police Chief Gary Adams identified the driver as 21-year-old Katherine J. Bedford and the pedestrian as 20-year-old Halle E. Griggs. Both are SMU students.
“I actually have no recollection of what happened last night,” Griggs told The Daily Campus.
Griggs is recovering from a broken pelvis and is currently in stable condition at Baylor Medical Center.
“First thing I knew I was parking my car to go to the library,” she said. “I woke up going to the hospital.”
“The contributing factors to the accident are driver inattention and the pedestrian failed to cross at a cross walk,” Adams said.
No charges were filed by the investigating officers.
Around 6:20 p.m. Monday, Bedford was driving her white Mazda southbound at the 6400 block of Airline Road when she struck Griggs, who was crossing Airline Road, according to the police report.
Bedford admitted to looking down at her cell phone while driving when she heard a crashing sound.
Bedford’s Mazda had minor damage, with a crack in the lower portion of her windshield.
Patricia Brodersen, who takes classes in the Annette Caldwell Simmons building, said when she had left her class to get something from her car, she heard what she describes as the sound of “a baseball bat hitting a ball.”
“I turned, and when I looked over there, I thought it was a bag of trash. I almost ignored her until I realized, ‘That’s a person,'” Brodersen said.
Brodersen ran to the scene of the accident, and police were notified by the man who was driving behind Bedford. Bedford said Griggs was seizing after she got hit.
However, Brodersen said she wasn’t moving when he saw her.
“When I walked up to her, I really kind of thought she was dead. I was just patting her telling her it was going to be okay,” she said.
Brodersen explained that almost no one was near the location of the accident at that time. Before the ambulance arrived, cars drove around Griggs, who continued lying on the ground.
Brodersen said SMU Police arrived quickly, and the University Park Police arrived soon after. The ambulance, however, did not arrive so quickly.
“She laid there for a long, long time,” Brodersen said. “I said to the [ University Park Police] man, ‘Where is the ambulance?’ and he just said, ‘We just have a lot going on tonight.'”
University Park Emergency Communications manager said that University Park has only one ambulance, which was responding to a kitchen fire in a house in the 3600 block of Villanova at the time. University Park dispatchers forwarded the call to Highland Park and Dallas units, but the University Park ambulance was able to arrive on the scene first.
According to Steve Mace, a University Park community information officer, the University Park ambulance arrived at 6:31 p.m., eight minutes and eight seconds after the initial 9-1-1 call was placed.
“If the Med Unit had been dispatched from Fire Headquarters at 3800 University, on scene arrival to the accident location would have been reduced by a minute or so,” Mace said.
Griggs was transported to the hospital 11 minutes after the ambulance arrived at the scene.
Junior Spanish major and pre-law student Cami Ruff was leaving her sorority’s chapter meeting when she saw Griggs laying on the ground crumpled in a ball.
“The police were standing right over her and she was yelling things like, ‘Oh my God, I’m hurting so bad,'” Ruff said.
A female police officer standing over her assured her that an ambulance was on the way, but the girl continued shouting.
Ruff says that Bedford, who drives a small white car, claims not to have seen the victim before she hit her.
“[Bedford] was saying things like, ‘I didn’t see her, she came out of no where,'” Ruff said.
Ruff says there were few students present and that the majority of witnesses were families who lived in the neighborhood right off of Airline Road.
Editors Katie Simon, Jessica Huseman and Taylor Adams contributed to this report.
