She was running a little late.

Gabriella Christine Rodriguez usually left for school around 6:30 a.m., said her mom, Shawna Rodriguez. But that Monday in September, it might have been closer to 6:40.

She was with her older brother and a friend. They walked down Hansford Place to Harrison Avenue, where their bus stop was on the other side of the four-lane street.

Usually, the trio would walk a little farther up Harrison, use a crosswalk, then double back to their bus. That morning – so they wouldn’t miss their ride – they decided to cross where they were.

The streetlight was out, Shawna said.

It was dark, and Gabby was wearing black pants and a black shirt, her required school uniform.

Her brother and friend made it safely across the street, but Gabby must have been a beat behind.

“They think she hesitated to pull up her pants or fix her shoe or something,” Shawna said.

It was 6:42 a.m. when the first vehicle, a silver SUV going west on Harrison, knocked Gabby out of her white Nike shoes. She was always particular about her shoes, Shawna said, so her sneakers were pristine.

Shoeless, the 15-year-old was lying on her stomach in middle of the road. Her friend reached her first, and Gabby said three words: “Call my mom.”

“That’s when the other car came, the other direction,” Shawna said. “Never slowed down. Never braked. They say they hit her so hard, and you can actually see it in the road, there’s an indent that is forever in the road.”

Gabby was one of 13 Cincinnati Public Schools students hit by a vehicle in 2018, according to police reports and a tally from the school district. Gabby, a sophomore at Western Hills University High School, was the only one killed.

The students range in age from 6 to 18.

At least nine were in crosswalks when they were hit.

And 11, including Gabby, were on Cincinnati’s West Side, within a roughly 1.25-square-mile zone.

Pedestrian deaths are skyrocketing nationwide, going from 4,302 in 2010 to 5,987 in 2016. In Ohio in 2017, there were 144 pedestrian fatalities, the highest death toll in a decade.

This is clearly not a problem isolated to Cincinnati or its schools.

But why have so many students been hit by cars? What does the proximity of the crashes on the West Side tell us? And what can we do to stop it?

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Again and again and again

This is a far-reaching problem touching every area of Cincinnati: students, the school board, city hall, teachers, parents – every single person who drives or walks or takes the bus.

But it's complicated, practically and politically. There is bickering over who's at fault, what should be done and who should pay for it. There are ideas but no single, affordable fix.

Prior to 2018, CPS did not track how often students were hit by cars, so we don’t know if this is happening more or less than before. But we do know that pedestrian crashes overall in the city have risen sharply, jumping 46 percent from 2013 to 2018.

Of the 13 CPS students hit by cars in 2018, at least three of the crashes involved hit-and-run drivers, leading to calls for heavier police enforcement and more in-depth investigations.

And eight of the students were hit before sunrise – leading some to question whether CPS needs to push back its start times.

In May, then- 14-year-old Lauren Wainscott was in a crosswalk outside Western Hills. She was headed to her bus after school when a driver ran into her, launching her into the air. Lauren was scraped up but not seriously physically injured, said her mom, Jenny Mider, but she now has anxiety about being on sidewalks.

On Dec. 14, in a crosswalk just up the street from Lauren’s crash,12-year-old Kenya Joy Austin was hit shortly before 7:30 a.m. Kenya spent several days in the hospital with a fractured femur and a cracked growth plate. She doesn’t remember most of what happened, said her mom, Asia Allen, but now Kenya has nightmares and “she’s afraid to walk outside alone.”

Two years ago, Kenya’s older brother was hit by a car in the same area, Allen said. He had a foot fracture and a concussion, and he still gets migraines.

The driver who hit Kenya took off. There’s no information in the police report about the car, but Allen says it was a red Pontiac Grand Prix. Kenya remembers the windows being tinted.

“The fact that they drove off, that’s what bothers her the most,” Allen said.

On Dec. 3, a group of four siblings was walking toward Covedale School. They came to the intersection of Cleves Warsaw Pike and Covedale Avenue and – in the crosswalk, with the walk signal – started to cross.

A woman was making a left turn onto Cleves Warsaw. She didn’t yield and ran into three of the kids, ages 10, 9 and 6.

The students escaped with bruises and scrapes, despite all three requiring a trip to the hospital, said their mom, Lamika Mitchell. But, there have been chiropractor appointments and legal paperwork. Mitchell has had to miss work. And now, every weekday, there’s the question of how the kids will get to class.

“I’m just not comfortable with them walking to school anymore,” Mitchell said. “(Drivers) need to start looking out for these children. My kids’ lives could have been taken before my eyes just because they were walking to school.”

Two weeks after that crash, an 11-year-old girl was hit in the same crosswalk, in the same manner, by a driver turning left.

‘An hour. It could save a life.’

The speed limit on Harrison Avenue is 35 miles per hour, but drivers regularly go 50 or faster, said Shawna, Gabby's mom. The family home is on Hansford Place, a dead-end off of Harrison.

The never-ending construction on Queen City Avenue is pushing more traffic to Harrison, Shawna said, so “it’s literally a racetrack out there.”

There are crosswalks, but drivers don’t always stop.

Plus, she said, everyone knows there are no cops and no cameras.

The night after Gabby died, Shawna and her husband went walking around, looking for any cameras that might have captured the driver who fled the scene. At one crosswalk, it took them more than 20 minutes to get across the street, Shawna said, because drivers were just ignoring them.

“Around here, people don’t care, because they know we don’t have street cameras,” she said. “You see, Downtown, a cop almost every block. Somehow, we’ve got to stay consistent in patrolling.”

Shawna has a list of what she wants, improvements that might mean her daughter didn’t die in vain. She wants more and better crosswalks, the kind with bright, flashing lights that highlight pedestrians. More and better street lights. More cameras. More traffic enforcement from police. And 24-hour parking on Harrison Avenue, which would slow traffic and essentially trim the street from four lanes to two.

Mayor John Cranley recently announced 24-hour parking on a stretch of Harrison, but it’s in Westwood, about 2 miles northwest of where Gabby was hit. The mayor said he would be open to extending that zone, though, if it is what the community wants.

Shawna also has a wish list for CPS. She wants different bus routes so students don’t have to cross four-lane streets twice a day. She wants lighter uniforms, so they don’t have to wear all black. And, she wants later start times.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends middle- and high schools start at 8:30 a.m. or later, and there’s plenty of scientific research that shows teenagers need more sleep than they can get with schools that start earlier.

Still, seven CPS high schools, including Gabby’s, start between 7:30 and 8 a.m.

CPS has been considering later start times for years but so far hasn’t made the jump. The district is expected to make a recommendation to the board later this spring about moving start times back.

“An hour,” Shawna said. “It could save a life.”

Whose job is this?

This is, in some ways, a political battle. CPS spends about $750,000 a year on crossing guards, primarily stationed near elementary schools, but it wants the city to foot that bill.

Mayor Cranley has pointed the finger at the school district, saying it needs to either hire more crossing guards or expand its busing program. Currently, high school students who live 1.25 miles or more from their school get a Cincinnati Metro pass. Kindergarten- through eighth-grade students who live a mile or more from their school can ride a traditional yellow school bus.

“A first grader shouldn’t have to walk a mile to school,” Cranley said. “They had a big school levy pass, so they have to decide what they’re going to fund. They have to do one or the other. Either way, it’s their job to get kids to and from school.”

But CPS points right back at City Hall.

The district’s busing policy, while it does not cover every student, “far exceeds the state standards,” said CPS spokeswoman Frances Russ, in a written response to questions from The Enquirer. CPS will spend more than $43 million on transportation this year , a cost that has only gone up in recent years.

And, it would be one thing if kids were getting hit on school property. But, they’re not.

“The public school system’s job is to keep our students safe on school grounds as we prepare them for a life beyond school,” Russ said. “The safety and security of our streets and neighborhoods is the responsibility of the city.”

Despite those differences, CPS and the city have taken steps lately to increase student safety. CPS added crossing guards near the shared Dater/Western Hills campus after it was revealed several students were hit there, and on Friday, Cranley announced nearly $1 million in pedestrian safety improvements, much of it centered around Western Hills school and Westwood.

Plus, there is a new joint task force aimed at addressing pedestrian safety in the area. Since 2013, according to an Enquirer analysis, 123 pedestrians have been hit by vehicles within a mile of the Dater/West campus.

Despite those efforts, though, this is more complicated than it might seem. Changing bus routes or start times would be expensive for CPS. The logistics are daunting, and it could end up solving old problems but creating new ones.

Students might not be on the streets before sunrise, for example, but would they be there after sunset, if their after-school practices and games were pushed back?

And sure, police could spend more time on traffic enforcement, and perhaps pedestrian crashes would decrease as a result. But that means police would have to spend less time on something else. And maybe shootings – which have trended down in recent years – would tick back up.

Here’s what it comes down to for Shawna: The attention and care of drivers. It’s heroin, speeding and cellphones, she said. In 2016, 3,450 people in the U.S. died as a result of distracted driving, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

“Some people want to say, ‘Well, we need to teach our kids,’” Shawna said. “Yeah, we do need to teach our kids. But we can teach our kids a million things – if the drivers aren’t driving safe, if they’re not focusing, if they’re not doing what’s right on the street, our kids have no chance.”

‘I just don’t want people to forget...’

Gabby is buried in Spring Grove Cemetery. Her parents chose a plot underneath a big tree, because they know she would have liked that. There’s no stone yet, but the grave is blanketed by flowers, balloons and photos.

Shawna visits nearly every day. Sometimes, she yells at Gabby for not going to a crosswalk that morning, for not triple checking for cars before she stepped into the street. But most days, she just sits and talks. She tells Gabby how much she loves and misses her. She talks about what Gabby’s friends and classmates are doing in her memory. And she asks for help.

Doctors have told Shawna and her husband that Gabby didn’t suffer, but Shawna is haunted by Gabby’s last few moments on Earth. “Those last three words,” she said. “’Call my mom.’ … I wasn’t there to protect her.”

The Rodriguezes have three older boys, but Gabby was their baby and their only girl. She was strong-willed, hard-headed, kind, confident and loud. She taught herself to play guitar. Softball was her passion.

Shawna treasures everything her daughter was, but she mourns the woman Gabby will never get the chance to become. She won’t graduate from high school, she won’t get married, she’ll never have children of her own.

“It’s a never-ending cycle of pain,” Shawna said. “You cry on your way to work, and you cry on your way home.”

The Rodriguez living room has turned into a shrine for Gabby, with photos and softball trophies lining the walls and shelves. Shawna wears a sweatshirt with her daughter’s face on it. The family’s truck has a new license plate: GABBY13.

This is life now, Shawna said.

Every day at the cemetery, she repeats the same plea: Show me you’re OK.

Then, she pulls herself up and drives home. She goes to City Hall and begs for answers and action. She sits down with reporters and, over and over, tells the story of how her daughter died.

She would rather just lie in bed and cry, she said. If she had her way, she might never get out of bed again. But Gabby won’t let her give up.

“We’ve got to make changes,” Shawna said. “We can’t just try to put a Band-Aid on it. I just don’t want people to forget: A 15-year-old died.”