The sound of a loud crash outside his home on Girdwood Road brought Joe Hartnett running, and while he had witnessed plenty of accidents here before, nothing could have prepared him for this one.
"I ran out and there was the little girl, the five-year-old girl, lying on the sidewalk. I tried to see if she was breathing and checked for a pulse. It was very shallow breathing,” said Hartnett, “Then, there was another woman kneeling in the middle of the sidewalk screaming and crying and she said her power steering went out or something like that."
Hartnett said he then turned and spotted what proved to be the young victim's grandmother lying about 50 feet away.
"Her hand was really badly damaged. The grill of the car was up her arm basically,” said Hartnett, “She was rolling around and tried to calm her down and then I went back to the girl and she wasn't breathing I don't think at that point."
Baltimore county police say the five-year-old girl had a sleep over at her grandmother's house and the two of them had gone out for an early walk with a stroller when tragedy struck.
"There was a 22-year-old female driver of a Kia SUV who was coming southbound on Girdwood. For reasons that we don't know yet, we're still investigating those, she left the roadway and traveled over the grass on to the sidewalk area striking the grandmother and the child that was in the stroller," said Baltimore County Police Ofc. Jennifer Peach.
The young girl died at the scene and her grandmother suffered an apparent heart attack just as paramedics arrived and was pronounced later at the Shock Trauma Center.
"There were a lot of factors that were going on this morning. At seven o'clock, you still had a little bit of low lighting because of the cloud cover. The roads were still wet. I'm not sure if it was raining at the time in this area,” said Peach, “We'll be investigating the car to make sure that there was no mechanical failure and then, of course, we'll also be investigating the driver herself."
The victims have now been identified as 60-year-old Debroah Ann Limmer and five-year-old Delaney Marie Gaddis.
The driver of the Kia suffered minor injuries and was treated at a local hospital.
The crash is still under investigation.
