Condition of teen hit-run victim remains 'touch-and-go'
At 11 p.m. Tuesday, Erik Simmons was just a college kid home on spring break, heading to a buddy's house after overindulging in his mother's good cooking.
At 11 p.m. Tuesday, Erik Simmons was just a college kid home on spring break, heading to a buddy's house after overindulging in his mother's good cooking.
By 11:30 p.m., he was a patient in Temple University Hospital's intensive-care unit, his head swiftly swelling from a fractured skull and his spleen and liver badly damaged.
Simmons, 18, and a friend were crossing Broad Street near Erie Avenue in North Philadelphia when a car blew through a red light. His friend made it safely across. Simmons did not. The driver mowed him down and kept going.
But this was no ordinary accident, even by hit-and-run standards. Police suspect that the fleeing driver might be connected to the death of Malik Looney, 21, who had been shot about six hours earlier on Clifford Street near Montgomery Avenue in North Philadelphia. Witness descriptions of the car from both incidents are similar: a grayish-blue Ford Crowd Victoria. The driver ditched the car at Broad and Venango after hitting Simmons.
Yesterday, Simmons' father had no thoughts of the thug who ran his son down in the street. Instead, he kept vigil at his bedside, updating dozens of well-wishers who kept his cell-phone trilling.
Many well-wishers who packed the hospital waiting rooms have been teens desperate for the recovery of a friend they affectionately called "E-Money."
Simmons played basketball and football at William Penn High School, where he graduated last June and where his father, James Ockimey, coached both teams. Simmons also played baseball at Ben Franklin High School as part of a cooperative sponsorship. He's now a freshman at Delaware State University, where he hadn't yet decided whether to study journalism or biology, Ockimey said. He planned to try out for the baseball and football teams, his dad added.
That future is now uncertain.
"He's heavily sedated. They're trying to keep the pressure [on his brain] down," said Ockimey, now assistant football coach at Bartram High. "It's touch-and-go right now. The doctors said the next three days are critical."
