A West Windsor Township man has been charged in connection to the death of a 12-year-old girl and her dog as they were crossing the street Nov. 27, according to the West Windsor Police Department.
The man, 65, who was driving a Jeep Grand Cherokee, was charged with failure to yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk, careless driving, leaving the scene of an accident, failure to report an accident and hitting a domestic animal, police said.
He was arrested Dec. 8 by officers from the West Windsor Township Police Department and the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office. He was taken to the Mercer County Correction Center, pending a detention hearing.
Police responded to the intersection of Rabbit Hill Road and Abbington Lane at 5:37 p.m. Nov. 27 to investigate a report of a pedestrian who had been struck by a vehicle at the intersection of the two streets.
Police and emergency medical personnel found the girl and her dog lying on the roadway in the middle of the intersection. The dog died at the scene. The girl was rushed to Penn Medicine Princeton Medical Center, where she subsequently died, police said.
The investigation determined that the girl and her dog were in the crosswalk and had already made it past one side of the street when they were struck by the Jeep Grand Cherokee, police said.
The driver knowingly left the scene and failed to report it, police said. He returned to the scene about 10 minutes later.
The Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office’s Serious Collision Response Team was called in to help police investigate the incident.
