The driver who struck and killed a two-year-old boy in Ironwood, Michigan, will not face criminal charges, leaving his mother, Jessica Fernandez, demanding answers.
Darwin Olson was hit at about 5am on March 19 outside his grandmother’s home and was pronounced dead at the scene.
Fernandez said Darwin had stayed with her mother the previous evening. At about 7am, she received a call asking whether she had already arrived to collect him.
When she replied that she had not, Fernandez said her mother screamed that Darwin was missing. She drove to the house but was stopped by emergency barricades and police.
“I got out of the vehicle and I said, ‘Is he OK?’ And (an officer) told me, ‘No, he’s not.’ And I said, ‘Is he alive?’ And he told me, ‘No,’” she recalled.
The Gogebic County Prosecutor’s Office said its review found that the child had been left “unattended”. Images from the scene also showed heavy snowfall in the area where the collision took place.
Prosecutors said this week that they would not file charges against the driver. Fernandez said she had been left with unanswered questions and was dissatisfied with the explanation she received.
“That’s the biggest thing is just I have all these questions, and it feels that no one wants to answer them for me,” she said.
Fernandez said the Gogebic County Sheriff’s Office had not initially disclosed the driver’s identity, telling her only that the person was a man and giving her details of the vehicle. The sheriff’s office disputed this account, saying a full police report naming the driver had been provided to Fernandez’s lawyer.
Sheriff Jorge Cruz said a comprehensive investigation had been carried out, including an examination of “the circumstances in which the toddler was unattended”.
Fernandez said she was told prosecutors did not believe they could win the case and that officials had found nothing criminal in the circumstances surrounding her son’s death.
The decision prompted a protest and candlelight vigil outside the Gogebic County courthouse, where demonstrators held signs reading, “Justice for Darwin.”
“I just miss him all around,” Fernandez said. “I’ll never get to see those milestones or anything that you would hope to see when your child grows up.”
