Two girls injured after being hit by car in South Lorain on Sunday

LORAIN — Two children were injured after being hit by a car while crossing the road in South Lorain on Sunday. Councilman Angel Arroyo, D-6th Ward, said the girls, ages 7 and 9, were crossing East 31st Street at Clinton Avenue when they were hit. He said they sustained "road rash" and other injuries in the crash. Neighbor Tony Padilla lives on East 31st Street near the intersection where the crash occurred, and was the one to call for help after the crash, which happened at 3 p.m. Lorain city employees installed stop signs on East 31st Street at Clinton Avenue on Monday, but on Sunday the crossing only had a fading painted crosswalk and yellow pedestrian signs. The speed limit in the area is 25 mph and there were already stop signs on Clinton Avenue at the intersection. Padilla showed security camera footage of the incident to Lorain police, and he also showed it to a Chronicle reporter. In the video, two girls are seen crossing East 31st Street to the north. When they are about halfway across the street, screeching tires can be heard and then a silver car enters the frame traveling west through the Clinton Avenue intersection. One girl attempts to leap out of the way but is struck and thrown back toward the south, landing near the south curb of East 31st. There is a pause after the crash, then she starts screaming. The second girl is hit at the center of the car's bumper, and she is immediately thrown a significant distance through the air. "It threw her at least 60 feet," Padilla estimated on Monday. The girl thrown further appears to be knocked unconscious, as she remains limp as the driver of the car gets out and picks her up, apparently trying to help. Padilla said he yelled not to touch the girls until paramedics arrived, and he then called 911. The Chronicle has requested a crash report from Lorain police, as well as information regarding the medical status of the girls. Arroyo said that the crash may have been prevented had the traffic light at the intersection not been removed nearly a decade ago. "This is something I've been fighting for since 2016," Arroyo said of the new stop signs put in Monday morning at the intersection after he met with city officials. A traffic study in 2013 prompted the removal of a number of traffic lights throughout the city — including many on the south side like the light at East 31st Street and Clinton Avenue. The stop signs put in on Monday will be joined by flashing lights and repainted crosswalks later in the week, Arroyo said. The new signs are "better than nothing," Arroyo said, but he plans to remain vigilant as to how many crashes continue to occur in that area. A new traffic signal would cost about $250,000, according to information from a March 10 Streets and Utilities Committee meeting on traffic signals in the city. Padilla, who has a young daughter of his own, said that in the time he has lived near the intersection, he has seen cars driving through the intersection 10 to 20 mph over the 25 mph speed limit "all the time." Though he said that the addition of stop signs was a step in the right direction, it would take more work and awareness to make drivers even realize the new stop signs were there, let alone to obey them. In the roughly 10 minutes that a Chronicle reporter spent speaking with Padilla, at least a dozen cars blew the new East 31st Street stop signs, most of them driving well above the speed limit. "We should move," Padilla said, standing on the sidewalk about 10 yards from the intersection. "It's really not safe to be here." Reporter Carissa Woytach contributed to this report. Contact Owen MacMillan at (440) 329-7123 or omacmillan@chroniclet.com.