‘Just pray’: 5-year-old remains in ICU after being hit by truck in Monroe

MONROE, N.C. — The mother of the two children hit by a truck while trick-or-treating on Halloween night told Channel 9 her five-year-old son is still in the ICU and his sister is heading back to the hospital.

Lashonda Alsobrooks said her son, Graylen, whom she calls “Duna,” is struggling to stay awake and is in serious pain. Her 10-year-old daughter, Journey, came home from the hospital Wednesday but headed back Thursday after experiencing a complication from her injuries.

Alsobrooks said she knows her son will get better but she’s asking for prayers.

“If you know God, just pray. That’s all I can say,” she said.

Alsobrooks told Channel 9 that her son occasionally wakes up screaming in pain. She says she’s been trying to talk to him, saying, “Look at Mommy,” and can see him struggling to open his eyes. He has yet to speak since he was hit, but he is responding to verbal cues from doctors when they ask him to move his arms and legs. She called him a fighter.

“He has a broken collarbone, a fractured skull at the back, and a little bit of bleeding on the brain. And right now, they’re doing MRIs to see if he’s got a concussion – or if it’s worse than a concussion – because he’s not opening his eyes,” Alsobrooks said.

She’s living a parent’s nightmare; she watched two of her five children get hit by a truck right in front of her and if that wasn’t bad enough. She says it could have been much worse.

“He was hit and he was thrown into the next lane, and in that lane coming in the other direction, was another pickup truck, like the one that hit him. And it stopped in the nick of time,” Brooks said. “Like, when I picked my baby up off the ground, he was damn-near touching the tire.”

Alsobrooks’ 10-year-old daughter Journey was also hit.

“She had a huge knot that stuck out like a goose egg [on her forehead] and it was very bloody -- nose bloody, lips bloody,” Alsobrooks said.

Journey had no broken bones and came home from the hospital Wednesday. However, Alsobrooks said she was heading back on Thursday because her eyes started to swell up.

The children were hit on Halloween night around 8 p.m. on Lancaster Avenue near Branch Street in Monroe. Alsobrooks said she had just parked her car on the curb of a dimly lit street in Monroe when the kids got out and ran across the street. That’s when they were hit.

Despite what happened, Alsobrooks said she forgives the driver, but thinks he should have been going slower since it was Halloween night.

Monroe police told Channel 9 the driver will not be charged in the crash.

“My first instinct. I ran out there and I grabbed my boy and I said, ‘You hit my kids!’ The man said, ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t see them.’ I looked up at the man and I said, ‘I forgive you. It’s OK. He’s breathing. He’s going to be OK. I’m not mad.’”

Alsobrooks said just before Halloween, she had watched a film on Tubi about a man who lost his daughter to a drunken driver, but came to forgive him by the end of the movie. That was on her mind when she saw the incident unfold.

“I don’t hate him at all. I just want him to know that Duna is going to recover from this. I know he’s going to get better. I know he’s going to make it, and I’m standing on that – I don’t care if it’s a month from now. I’m standing on it.”

Channel 9 spoke to witnesses the day after the accident who described the chaotic scene that night. On the next day, city work crews replaced the light above the street near the spot where the crash happened.

Alsobrooks is trying to stay strong for her son, her daughter, and her three older children, who are 16, 15, and 11.

But Alsobrooks said it’s Graylen who needs prayer now.

“I’m missing him so much,” she said. “I just miss hugging him and seeing his dimples popping out. He’s just always so happy. Like he’s the happiest child I know, he doesn’t meet strangers. He’s so cool, everybody loves Duna.”

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