At a City Council meeting set for 6 p.m. Monday, officials will consider installing four-way stop signs at the Healdsburg Avenue intersection to prevent further injury.
"Something has to be done," City Manager Paul Cayler said.
Andrade and Torres, Washington School seventh-graders, were crossing at the intersection south of Citrus Fair Drive on their way to a friend's house with another friend, Jasmine Gonzalez, shortly before 7 p.m. Thursday when they saw a northbound pickup approaching.
Spread out somewhat as they crossed single-file west to east and into the darker, northbound lane, they noticed a northbound Ford Ranger pickup heading toward them, Torres and Gonzalez said Friday.
But they all assumed it would stop, they said.
It didn't.
The driver, James Livingston McGiffin, 75, later told police he didn't see the youths as they crossed the wide boulevard, police Sgt. Keith King said.
"I thought he was going to stop," Torres said. "I don't know; I just saw bright lights."
Torres was knocked to the ground and lost consciousness, but his cousin, walking in the middle of the group, bore the brunt of the impact, and was screaming in pain, drawing scores of trick-or-treaters and other onlookers, residents said.
Gonzalez, 13, said she was stunned by what happened but was aware of McGiffin jumping from the truck and instructing whoever could hear him to call 911.
"It was right in front of me, and I didn't know what to do," Gonzalez said. She dialed 911 and then ran to Andrade's home in the center of town to alert his mother.
Police and more than a dozen firefighters, most from the fire station just about 100 yards away, rushed to the scene to help.
Torres was taken by ambulance to Healdsburg District Hospital, while Andrade was airlifted to Children's Hospital, where about 25 family members had gathered by Friday, his aunt said.
He appeared not to have suffered any serious brain injury beyond the concussion, she said. Doctors so far have indicated he should recover from the leg injuries, though "it's not going to be easy," Jauregui said. "There's going to be a lot of follow-up work."
Police said McGiffin was cooperating fully with the investigation, and said there were no indications he had been drinking, speeding or using a cell phone.
But King said it was unclear why he didn't see the kids, who were among many out Halloween night.
The crosswalk is marked with hash-marks and the streetlights on the west side of the intersection were working, he said.
But there is no light directly over the east side of the intersection, on the northbound side, and residents say it's just too dark to be safe.
"You have to be really, really careful," said Brian Leeland, who lives on the southeast corner and sometimes walks over to the market across the boulevard. "The light is not good."
After Maria Ponce's death from injuries in a crash there in July, about 60 of her family and friends beseeched the City Council to do something to improve safety at the intersection, in part because of its long accident record.
The city has since had an engineering firm assessing the crossing and potential improvements. But having a fifth incident within a year altered the calculation needed to justify a four-way stop, Cayler said.
"We don't have the money, the time, or the design to have a traffic signal installed right now," a project that would likely run around $250,000 or more, Cayler said. "A four-way stop is what we can do right now to make an improvement."
On Friday, the city took the first step by installing a flexible, fluorescent sign in the center of the boulevard alerting motorists to the crosswalk.
The City Council meeting will begin at 6 p.m. Monday at the Cloverdale Performing Arts Center following a closed session at 5 p.m. Spanish translation will be available.
(You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com.)
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