Car plows into parade crowd in Texas; several hurt

[December 02, 2008]  OVERTON, Texas (AP) -- An elderly driver hurtled through barricades into a crowd lined up for a Christmas parade Monday and injured several people, some of them members of a Cub Scout troop, a city official and witnesses said.

City Manager B.J. Potts said the driver was arrested, but alcohol was not detected. "It happened very quickly," Potts said. "There's still a lot of questions."

An executive with the East Texas Area Council Boy Scouts told the Longview News-Journal that 11 people were injured -- nine Cub scouts and two adults.

John Moore, a spokesman for Mother Frances Hospital in nearby Tyler, told The Associated Press that of the seven people brought there, five have been treated and released. They include two women, ages 28 and 33, and three boys, ages 8, 9 and 11.

One 7-year-old boy was in good condition while a second was in serious condition, Moore said.

Potts said that one youth was flown to a Dallas hospital and that several had been released from hospitals, but he did not have an exact number.

One of the injured boys and his mother told KLTV in Tyler that the injured came from a Cub Scout troop.

Eleven-year-old Toby Melton talked to the station after being released from the hospital for a knee injury.

"I was asking this one lady for a piece of gum, and she said yeah, and I turned around and a truck started coming towards us real fast," he told KLTV. "It was real scary, frightening."

His mother, Nancy Melton, said the scene was chaotic as parents rushed to find their children.

Rusk County Justice of the Peace Jerdy Wolverton said he heard a noise and people screaming.

"There were kids on the ground, some sitting up, one or two standing. ... All I heard was a lot of bumping noises and screaming, and everyone was on the ground and there was a truck there," Wolverton told the Longview News-Journal.

A dispatcher with the police office said the department would not give out any information until Tuesday morning.

Overton, a town of 2,300, is about 120 miles southeast of Dallas.

[Associated Press]

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