Local father calling for change after son injured in hit-and-run

KINGSTON, Mass. — A Kingston father is calling for changes when it comes to distracted driving after his son was injured in a hit-and-run while riding his bike.

Jaymz Lipinski is lucky to be alive and back to riding his bike after being hit by a car last Friday.

The crash happened at around 4 p.m. on West Street in Kingston, but no one was around to witness it and all the nearby homes were blocked by vegetation. The people who live near the scene of the crash weren't home.

The 17-year-old says the car hit him, sending him flying into a street sign, which, along with some bushes, broke his fall.

"I felt something really hard hit me in the hip and shoot me off my bike into a street sign and I basically broke the street sign in half," said Jaymz.

Jaymz suffered minor injuries and is back to doing normal 17-year-old things, but says that it broke his heart that no one was around to help and the driver simply took off.

"I don't understand how you either hit me and not realize it or how you can live with yourself doing this and driving away," said Jaymz. "I'm a 17-year-old boy trying to exercise."

His father, Bart Lipinski, believes the driver must have been distracted to not have seen Jaymz on the remote street.

"At the time I was scared, but then I got angry," said Lipinski. "Whatever is going on in Beacon Hill with [the] hands-free stuff, something has to get done. It's not just cyclists, it's anybody. People are in too much of a hurry, they are on cell phones, they are not driving their cars. It only takes a second to look down and then look back up and hit something."

Jaymz needed stitches to close a three-inch gash in his arm, but he knows that next time he or the next person might not get so lucky.

"There's a street sign and four feet away there's a telephone pole, if I [had] hit the telephone pole, I probably would not be here talking to you right now," said Jaymz.

Police said the car involved in the hit-and-run is a black mid-sized SUV with damage to the passenger side mirror. They fear, however, that since it's been a week since the accident, the driver may have already fixed the car.

>> MORE: Victim's family tracks down Boston DPW worker accused of hit-and-run

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