ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (WFLA) — A St. Petersburg mother is now behind bars after investigators said she failed to supervise her 2-year-old child who was killed last October after darting into the roadway and being hit by a truck.
Alejandra Segundo Cruz, 32, was arrested Thursday and faces charges for aggravated manslaughter of a child, as well as neglect of a child with great bodily harm, according to an affidavit.
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Alejandra Segundo Cruz (Credit: Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office)
Detectives said Segundo Cruz was letting her 2-year-old child and his siblings play “unsupervised” in the front yard of their home, located off 49th Avenue North, when the incident happened on Oct. 29.
According to investigators, the 2-year-old “darted” in front of a Ford F450 pickup truck just as the driver was heading eastbound on 49th Avenue North.
The boy was run over by the truck and died from his injuries.
The driver of the pickup truck, a 34-year-old man from Valrico, stayed on scene after the crash. He told detectives that he never saw the 2-year-old in front of his truck, largely due to the boy’s small size.
Witnesses in the area recalled hearing people yelling and seeing the child’s parents going out to the road, with one man telling News Channel 8 it was “beyond tragic.”
Detectives said in the affidavit that the boy’s mother “should have known that leaving young children unsupervised to play outside in the front yard near the roadway could have caused them to get seriously hurt or killed if they entered the roadway and were struck by [a] vehicle.”
The Florida Highway Patrol announced charges against Segundo Cruz on Thursday. She was booked into jail in Pinellas County, according to jail records.
Her bond was set at $150,000 for the first degree aggravated manslaughter charge and $10,000 for the neglect of a child on Friday.
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