As KMOX has reported, last weekend a teenage girl named Janae Edmondson who was visiting St. Louis for a volleyball tournament was tragically struck by a reckless driver in a crash that caused her to lose both her legs.
A resident of Downtown reached out to KMOX's The Show. CJ Eckrich was outside his apartment when the crash happened. He shared his perspective of the situation. He described the scene that night as "chaotic."
"All of a sudden — it's normal — I hear a speeding car from behind me. I was facing the direction where the accident happened at the intersection," Eckrich said. "So as soon as he came into my peripheral vision, I looked up from my phone and immediately seen him hit the car that was traveling on 11th Street, saw him veer off to the right and hit the young lady that was standing with a couple other people behind a parked car. And then he immediately flipped over on his top and came to arrest maybe 40 feet from where he struck the young girl."
He said he could tell from 30 feet away how bad the crash was.
"I saw in plain sight 30 feet away that car strike an individual. I didn't know whether it was a man or a woman. I had no idea. I just figured what I saw, there was no way that person was breathing at that speed at that direct hit," he said.
Eckrich told The Show how he called 911 and how he and other bystanders did what they could to help until the first responders arrived. He also talked about how being a resident of Downtown, he's used to hearing gunshots and witnessing violence.
Hear his full account on KMOX's The Show:
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