LENOIR, N.C. -- A 3-year-old boy wandered out of his Lenoir home sometime after 12:30 a.m. Tuesday and was then run over by an SUV a quarter of a mile away from his house.
Lenoir police identified the boy as Jamason Fitts of 217 Sharon Avenue. Pitts died at Carolinas Medical Center at 3:40 p.m. Tuesday.
The boy was struck in the northbound lane of Highway 321, in front of a KFC fast food restaurant. The driver of the SUV has not as yet been charged.
A neighbor of the 3-year-old said the boy had wandered away from his house Monday morning as well.
Fedolina Velasquez said her husband found the boy in the neighborhood.
"He crossed the street and my husband took his hand and bring him to her (his mother) and she is scared because she didn't know he was outside," says Velasquez.
Velasquez added that the mother told her Monday that the door was broken and that is how the boy got out.
"If she knew the door is no good, why she not fix the door?" Velasquez said.
No one knows for sure how the boy made it from the house, down a steep hill, to Highway 321.
Lt. Allen Lawrence of the Lenoir Police Department said the Department of Social Services is working with police investigators on the case.
"There's some questions we still have, as investigators within the department, that we are trying to piece together and find out what that child was doing exactly," he says.
