Unsolved hit-and-run has girl and family frustrated

Alexa McClintic noticed the white car just after she crossed South Park Drive, as she was stepping onto the curb near the Cooper River Yacht Club.

It was about 2:40 p.m. April 22; the Collingswood Middle School student was planning to sit by the water in Cooper River Park and write in her journal. She often goes there with her sketchbook as well.

"The car was coming pretty fast and didn't beep or anything," Alexa, 12, says softly. "I don't actually remember what happened when it hit me.

"I blacked out, and when I woke up, there were people all around, asking me my name and when I was born."

Witnesses told police that they saw an white, older-model Lexus sedan continue north toward Route 130 after hitting Alexa. The impact fractured the Collingswood girl's pelvis and left her with a concussion, as well as abrasions on her lower body.

Alexa spent two days at Cooper University Hospital. On Monday, she returned - using a cane - to her sixth-grade classes. She has had nightmares about the experience, likely will need physical therapy, and has not been back to the park.

"If I have to sit for a long time in a certain position, it hurts a lot," she says. "The pain goes away and then comes back really strong sometimes."

Although borough police say the investigation is continuing, the family is frustrated.

"We want information about this to get out there," says McClintic's oldest brother, Max Scanish, 24, a mechanic who lives in Woodbury. "It shouldn't be swept under the rug, as if it didn't happen."

Alexa's mother, Colleen Scanish-McClintic, says, "There are things on the news all the time about hit-and-runs."

But not this particular one, it seems.

"This was a crime. My daughter was hit," says Scanish-McClintic, 45, a married mother of four, who works as a retail-merchandise coordinator.

"The driver did not stop," she says. "They don't have a conscience."

Says Alexa, "You don't just run away like that. It's not human."

We're in the living room of her home on a tidy block of Crestmont Terrace, which dead-ends at a set of stone steps leading down to South Park Drive.

Across the serpentine, two-lane roadway lies the park and then the river; there are no crosswalks nearby, and the (frequently flouted) speed limit is 25 m.p.h.

After a witness used Alexa's phone to call the girl's parents, Scanish-McClintic raced down the stone steps and saw her "creative, artistic" daughter lying on the side of the road with a crowd around her.

"Alexa was conscious," Scanish-McClintic recalls. "She said she didn't want me to cry."

Emotion rises in her voice. She pauses.

"I don't want to feel like what happened didn't matter," she continues. "I don't want the driver to think they can get away with this. I don't want this to happen to somebody else."

So far, borough police have been unable to locate any useful video, says Chief Kevin Carey. "Nothing was captured." Nor did witnesses remember seeing what state's tags were on the car.

Carey was reluctant to discuss the ongoing investigation, but did say police had determined that the Lexus sedan sustained front-end damage, including to the headlight cover - plastic pieces of which were recovered at the scene.

Collingswood has shared the vehicle description with other law enforcement agencies. Carey also asks anyone with information to call 856-854-2401, Ext. 102.

Scanish-McClintic says her family has been touched by an outpouring from the community, including get-well cards, flowers, and balloons.

She especially wants to thank the "total strangers" who came to her daughter's aid.

Alexa is "resilient," Scanish-McClintic says. "I'm just glad she's here."