HOUSTON – A 2-year-old girl is clinging to life after, investigators said, a car backed over her.
The incident happened around 11 p.m. Thursday during a family reunion at a home on O'Donnel Drive and Rittenhouse in northeast Houston.
Police said the little girl was crossing the street to follow her father when a 19-year-old, who was moving her Volkswagen Beatle to a different spot, backed over her.
The girl's father, Hector Perez, said the driver is his cousin and she didn't even know she'd hit the girl.
"My cousin, when she backed away, she thought she had hit a dog," said Perez. "And everyone else thought the same thing. Because it was dark, nobody could see. Until we got closer and we saw it was a kid. We didn't know what kid it was until she moved away and I saw that it was her."
The toddler was rushed to the hospital with critical head injuries. Perez said the little girl had surgery and everything seems to be looking OK.
"Except one broken bone she has in her skull behind near her back," said Perez.
Police said they don't think alcohol was a factor in the incident, but they haven't ruled it out completely.
"We are not getting any clue that she had been drinking, but given the situation, we are going to have her tested by one of our DWI units," said Sargent Ignacio Izaguirre with the Houston Police Department.
Perez said he's since tried to speak with his cousin, but she's too upset to talk to him.