Baby girl wandering alone in dark, dies after struck by vehicle

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A 20-month-old girl was struck by a vehicle and killed while walking alone on a busy road. The toddler's mother says she thought her baby girl was at home and didn't find out her daughter was dead until deputies came knocking at her door. 

The young girl's grandfather describes Tuesday as the worst day of his life in an interview with FOX 26 News. It was on busy East Bayshore Drive in San Leon where baby Kinsey was wandering alone at 8:45 p.m. Monday.

"The driver noticed at the very last minute that there was a child in the middle of the roadway walking," explains Major Douglas Hudson with the Galveston County Sheriff’s Office. "He tried to avoid the child.” The man was not able to prevent the vehicle from striking her running over her body. He found a Galveston County Sheriff's deputy in a parking lot and hysterically told the deputy what happened just as Summer Adams and her boyfriend drove up.

”My boyfriend, he swerved, and the way he swerved and I was like, 'Oh my gosh, was it a dog?' and I saw just a glimpse of it and he said, 'No, it’s a person.' I was like, 'What do you mean?' He was like, 'It was a kid.' I told him, 'You need to turn around. I need to get to that baby. I need to pray over her,” explains Adams.

“She was unconscious, bleeding and unresponsive," adds Major Hudson. "Life Flight took her to UTMB in Galveston.” Baby Kinsey was pronounced dead at the hospital. Investigators went searching door to door for the baby’s family. When deputies arrived at one house in particular, a woman answered the door. 

”Deputies were asking if she knew where her child was and she said, 'Yes, she’s in her crib. I just put her down a few minutes ago,'" explains Major Hudson. "They went to double check and that’s when they discovered the child was gone.”

Kinsey apparently wandered from her house and was run over two blocks away. Major Hudson says in addition to being a dimly-lit area, one light was blown out in the stretch of road where the baby was hit and killed.

“She is in a better place and we need to continue to pray for the family of her and the family of the driver,” says Adams.                      

Investigators say the man who ran over the baby is cooperating with detectives, passed all of the field sobriety tests and gave a blood sample for further testing but deputies say he does not appear to have been impaired.

Child Protective Services has placed the young girl's six-month-old sibling and an older child with relatives.  Pending the outcome of the investigation, the baby girl's mother could face charges.