Girl hit by car, injured in Santa Rosa crosswalk

A little Santa Rosa girl struck by a car Sunday night as she walked hand-in-hand with her mother in a Petaluma Hill Road crosswalk remained hospitalized Monday with possibly life-threatening injuries.

Guadalupe Nunez-Solorzano, 6, and her mother tried to jump out of the way when they realized the oncoming car wasn’t going to stop for them, Santa Rosa traffic Sgt. Ryan Corcoran said Monday.

The driver of the Ford Focus apparently stomped on his brakes just before reaching the pair and hit the girl, knocking her about 25 feet up the roadway. Her mother fell to the ground but wasn’t struck, Corcoran said.

“They were in the crosswalk. When they saw the car wasn’t stopping, they tried to get out of the way of the car really quick,” Corcoran said.

Guadalupe was taken to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital and then flown to Children’s Hospital Oakland, where she remained Monday.

Driver Stephen Barbieri, 67, stopped immediately and has cooperated with the police investigation, Corcoran said. Police at this point don’t believe Barbieri, who had been driving from Rohnert Park to his home in Santa Rosa, was impaired or driving above the 40-mph limit.

Guadalupe, her parents and her older brother had been visiting with relatives who live on the west side of Petaluma Hill Road near Breeze Way. At about 9:20 p.m., they began to head for their car, parked on the east side of the major thoroughfare.

There is a crosswalk and an elaborate pedestrian crossing alert system at the Breeze Way intersection to alert drivers when there are people in the roadway. Witnesses told police the lights had been activated, and family members also said they had hit the button, Corcoran said.

He called the crosswalk alert system at that intersection, which includes lights on each side of the crosswalk and above, in the center, “the most lit, obvious one along that stretch.”

The father and son had already reached the other side. The mother and daughter, holding hands, had just reached the northbound lane.

At least two people called 911, bringing several officers and firefighters to the “T” intersection south of Colgan Avenue.

The screech of brakes and the impact could be heard nearby in the Breeze Way neighborhood.

“I heard the brakes and I heard the thunk,” followed by the sound of sirens, said Pamela Flippin, who lives with her family a few doors down from the intersection.

Flippin was headed for bed so didn’t go to the corner to see what had happened, as she often does for what she said were frequent crashes there. She learned several hours later from news accounts that the victim was a child. “That little girl ... It’s a horrible thing.”

Guadalupe’s family followed her to the Oakland hospital, which specializes in serious injuries and illnesses involving children. Officers also traveled to Oakland late Sunday night to interview them about what had happened.

Police closed Petaluma Hill Road for the investigation and opened it after five hours. On Monday, the only signs of the collision were bits of yellow police tape tied to a few poles, where the sidewalk and roadway had been blocked. Pink spray-paint circles in the roadway indicated where officers had found evidence.

Neighbor Flippin said her husband was almost hit by a car last week in the same intersection. They had heard a crash and headed over to the roadway, her husband carrying orange cones he grabbed from their garage. “We went down to direct traffic,” she said.

But as the man walked into the crosswalk to get to the two crashed vehicles, he was nearly hit by a car that whizzed by him despite the activated crosswalk alert, she said.

“This is a very bad corner,” she said. “It’s getting worse.”

A check of three years’ worth of traffic incidents in Santa Rosa didn’t show that intersection to be among the city’s worst. Corcoran said activity there has not risen to a need for special enforcement.

Flippin said that even with the flashing lights on the crosswalk, she won’t use it during commute hours, saying too many drivers speed up and down that stretch, which isn’t far from the city limits and a 55-mph county zone. “It’s like a racetrack,” she said.

And when she crosses with her great-grandson to go to a park across the route, she never takes the crosswalk and its lights and loud warning message for granted. “Even then we’re very cautious.”

Corcoran asked anyone who saw what happened to contact Officer Tim Wilhelm at 543-3636.

You can reach Staff Writer Randi?Rossmann at 521-5412 or randi.?rossmann@pressdemocrat.com or?on Twitter @rossmannreport.