Residents of a Springfield neighborhood are pleading with city council to curtail what they see as a problem with speeders in their subdivision.
They lobbied council members for speed bumps at Tuesday night’s city council meeting in the wake of a 4-year-old boy getting hit by a car in Deer Run subdivision.
“We’ve been trying to get speed bumps for a couple of years in our subdivision,” said Tabitha Kirkland. “I have a little one myself, and I don’t want to see anyone hit him.”
Kirkland brought a petition of residents asking for speed bumps. Out of the 28 homes in Deer Run, she said more than half of those living there signed the petition. The rest, she said, she couldn’t catch up with and only one person turned her down.
Four-year-old Cole Moore was riding his bicycle on Aug. 19 when he collided with a car. He suffered a broken collarbone and both his eyes are blackened from a fractured eye socket. He also recently had stitches removed from his foot.
Moore joined his mother Amanda Moore as she pressed the case for speed bumps in the subdivision.
“We have called on several occasions about speeding,” she said. “They changed the signs, but that hasn’t changed anything. This has been going on for years.”
Moore said children who live on Ash Street Extension, which runs parallel to Deer Road, come to the neighborhood to play because of how busy Ash Street Extension is.
“It’s a problem for everybody on that road,” she said. “This has been a problem for a while and now a child has been run over. And it sill hasn’t changed anything.”
Moore also said she has taken down license plate numbers of suspected speeders. Kirkland also said she has had to try to stop some of the neighbors from speeding.
“I’ve put myself between the cars and my kids,” she said. “I would rather see me get hit than one of my kids.”
Council member Butch Kieffer said the police can be asked to conduct extra patrols after school and on Saturdays.