Official: Police recover SUV that struck, killed boy, 4

After a young boy was killed and a mother and her child seriously injured in separate hit-and-run incidents Monday night, Philadelphia police asked for the public's help in identifying the drivers responsible.

They also highlighted rewards posted in each hit and run - $20,000 in the death of the 4-year-old boy in Kingsessing, and $10,000 in the case of the 19-year-old woman and her 2-year-old son in Fairhill. Mother and child remained in critical condition Tuesday at Temple University Hospital, police said.

An attorney for a 27-year-old woman whom police call a "person of interest" in the fatal accident has been in discussions with the District Attorney's Office, authorities said.

Police recovered the vehicle, a black 2014 Ford Edge, Tuesday night in the parking garage below LOVE Park, said Lt. Greg Brown of the Accident Investigation District. The SUV was an Enterprise rental vehicle.

Earlier Tuesday, Capt. John Wilczynski of AID asked witnesses to either crash to come forward. "What we really need is some help from the public," he said. ". . . We're just hoping that someone out there can get us some information about either crash."

The first incident took place around 6:30 p.m. Monday, when the 4-year-old, identified by police as Abdul Wilson, slipped between two parked cars and into the road.

Wilczynski said police believe that the car was not speeding, and that it had no time to stop. But leaving the scene of a deadly accident carries a minimum sentence of a year in jail, he said.

Witnesses described a frantic scene at 57th and Litchfield Streets, with the boy's mother running into the street and asking, "Do you hear me? Do you hear me? Are you alive?"

The boy, who was clutching an action figure when he was hit, was pronounced dead about a half-hour later at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Police on Tuesday afternoon released a video of the incident, showing the boy's blurry figure darting in front of the SUV, then lying limp in the street as the car drives off.

The other hit-and-run took place about 7 p.m. on the 2700 block of North Mascher Street. The woman, carrying her son, was hit by a newer-model white Acura as she crossed the street, Wilczynski said.

Anyone with information on either incident is asked to call 215-685-3180, police said.