Cody Mayes, Deonte Williams and Tevin Wilson are all facing charges after being hit by a truck while walking along a Louisiana roadside. (KATC screenshot)

Here’s a riddle for you: Three young black men are walking alongside a Louisiana road when they get hit by a passing vehicle. Who gets charged?


If you guessed “the driver, of course, duh,” then you guessed wrong, because apparently nothing makes sense anymore.

According to KATC, three young men from Ville Platte, La., are still recovering from their injuries after being hit by a truck while walking along North Chataignier Street. However, to add insult to injury, the three are now facing charges, while the driver is not.


Deonte Williams, 21; Cody Mayes, 19; and Tevin Wilson, 17, are all nursing scrapes, bruises and staples, but they are even more upset that they have been fined for not wearing reflective clothing at night and are also facing charges of obstructing a public passage.

“For me to find out that this guy gets to just go home—we all get some misdemeanors and nothing happened to him,” Williams told the news station, “I’m upset about it.”

The incident occurred around 8 p.m. Tuesday along the road, which does not have any sidewalks, KATC notes.

“I just wake up; my cousin [is] telling me, ‘Don’t get up,’ and I was just full of blood,” Williams recalled of being hit by the truck. “When I wake up, I don’t see nobody with the truck there. I don’t see nothing but the ambulance leaving with me.”


Police are pointing the finger at the trio for being in the roadway and not wearing reflective gear, citing a city ordinance that requires pedestrians to wear reflective garments after dark if walking.

Police say the motorist who struck the teens stayed at the scene and said that he had been blinded by the headlights of an oncoming vehicle. However, Williams and the teens refute the statement, insisting that the driver was at fault and that they were not in the middle of the road at the time they were hit.


All I know is that road safety is one thing, and it is extremely important to be sure, but this seems highly ridiculous.

Anyway, Williams told KATC that he and the others were walking on the side of the road near the grass when they were hit from behind.


“He must have had his lights off and going pretty fast because it hit all three of us,” Williams said.

Wilson told another news station, KADN, that if it weren’t for the fact that nearby residents started coming out of their houses after the incident, the driver probably would have left the scene.


“At first, he was going to keep going ... everyone started coming out of their house, but if they didn’t come out of their house, I really believe he was going to keep going,” he said.

According to KADN, Ville Platte Police Chief Neal Lartigue said that the case is still under investigation.


But the young men are just hoping that their charges are dropped.

“I guess the Lord got to work in his own way,” Williams told KATC.

Read more at KATC and KADN.

