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Mother to hit-and-run driver who killed 2-year-old girl: ‘You took my everything’

The Denver Broncos hadn’t yet won the Super Bowl when little Evelyn Green, 2, fell off her scooter.

It was dark, but it wasn’t late, and her mother, Vickie Davis, 26, was outside her home at 3404 Thomas Ave., watching her.

As the girl stretched to get up near the neighbor’s driveway, her brother — also on a scooter — turned to see why she was behind. As he and his mother watched, a large, white-panel van plowed into Evelyn about 5:45 p.m., police said.

“They say he was speeding,” said Evelyn’s grandfather, Ricky Davis, at a vigil Monday night. He was visibly tired, his eyes wet; he had driven in from California as soon as he heard Sunday night.

The crash happened fast, and in a flash, Evelyn was face down on the ground, next to a dumpster.

Her brother reached her first, turning over her tiny, mangled body. And when he saw she wasn’t breathing, the 7-year-old pounded on her chest.

“He tried to bring her back,” the grandfather said.

But Evelyn was gone. And her mother was in shock. There was her daughter, lifeless. And there was the driver, apologizing. He had stopped briefly, to tell her he didn’t mean it. Davis said she could smell tequila on his breath as she tried to process what to do next.

“I can hear him, I can see him, but I’m not worried about him right now,” she said of her thoughts at the time.

In a moment of tunnel vision, she ignored the apologetic driver and she scooped up her girl, loading her into a friend’s car. Together, they raced to North Vista Hospital, about a mile down the street. But there was nothing to do.

The girl whom relatives said loved baby dolls and strollers and playing house with her two brothers — the other one, 4 — was dead.

And in that window of time between when Evelyn was taken to the hospital and police arrived, the van driver slipped away. North Las Vegas officer Aaron Patty said the man was in his 40s, with facial hair, and added police were trying to determine whether drugs and alcohol were a factor.

“Whoever you are, turn yourself in,” the mother said as TV crews encircled her Monday night. “You took away my daughter. You took away my everything.”

Her composure was short-lived; her pain visceral. She was sad and mad at the same time, and she lashed out at the sky as family members stood watch and strangers left candles and balloons at a small memorial where Evelyn died.

“My baby’s gone,” she screamed.

Two balloons floated into the air, and a relative prayed out loud.

“My baby’s gone!”

A girl in her mother’s arms batted at a red balloon tied to a candle.

“I don’t care if I look stupid!” Davis yelled out to the crowd. “My baby’s gone!”

Police officers came briefly to monitor her grief.

“Losing a child is the worst thing in the world; I was out here last night,” an officer announced to the crowd. But he pleaded for self-control. “I don’t wanna break this up. Let’s just try to take care of each other right now.”

The grandfather, unfazed, said he was staying in town to help his daughter and pay for Evelyn’s funeral. Then, he planned to move her and his grandsons back out to California; they had been in the valley for only six months.

As the officers climbed back in their cars, one woman told Davis, “You’ll be in my prayers tonight.”

Another woman walked away as Davis began screaming again, whispering to herself, “She needs to be in a whole bunch of people’s prayers.”

— Contact Rachel Crosby at rcrosby@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5290. Find her on Twitter: @rachelacrosby

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