Why CCSD says reports of kids hit by vehicles have doubled

Over 100 children have been hit by vehicles in the Las Vegas Valley just since the start of the school year — a number that is more than double the number of kids hit by cars at the start of the school year in both 2024 and 2023.

Law enforcement agencies around Clark County have reported at least 108 crashes involving child pedestrians between the school year’s start on Aug. 11 and Oct. 9.

That’s more than double the 41 reported collisions in the first two months in each of the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 school years. And it’s almost the same as the total number of children who were struck by vehicles in the entire 2024-2025 school year, which was 120. Of that 120, 57 were Clark County School District students, the school district said, adding that 35 were pedestrians, 11 were riding a bike, five were riding a scooter, five were on an electric scooter, and one was on an electric bike.

The data was provided to the Las Vegas Review-Journal by the school district, which said the data pertains to reported collisions involving child pedestrians on weekdays between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. The school district was citing information from the Metropolitan Police Department, the North Las Vegas, Henderson, Mesquite and Boulder City police departments, and the Clark County School District Police Department.

Nevada law enforcement has been getting better at tracking juvenile traffic collisions, which accounts for some of the reported increase, school district police Lt. Bryan Zink previously said, citing better methods of data collection.

The deaths this month of Cristofer Suarez and Haylee Ryan, two 12-year-old Clark County School District students who were fatally struck by vehicles in separate crashes near school zones in Las Vegas, have reignited a local conversation about how safe kids are when they’re walking, or riding their bikes, to and from school.

Suarez was hit by a suspected reckless driver while walking to Smith Middle School on Oct. 3, and Ryan was struck by a school bus while riding a bicycle near Lied STEM Academy on Oct. 6.

And in May, McKenzie Scott, 18, was struck and killed by an impaired driver near Arbor View High School, where she was a senior.

Some parents are taking their children’s safety into their own hands. Days after Scott’s death, a mother of two Arbor View students founded Walk Safely LV, an advocacy group composed of four mothers who volunteer as crossing guards at two schools in the Las Vegas Valley. They recently extended their mission to East Owens Avenue, near Smith Middle, until another group of moms stepped in.

Since Aug. 11, the Las Vegas Review-Journal has reported on two additional children who were killed by vehicles: Reynaldo Martinez de la Sanchez, 16, who died after a car struck him while he was operating a moped on Sept. 7, and Jovonn Magee-Thomas, 12, who died on Sept. 21 after a van hit him while he was riding an electric scooter.

‘Each of us must do something’

“They’re like ghosts all over town,” said Erin Breen, director of UNLV’s Road Equity Alliance Project, referring to children killed in traffic crashes in the valley. “I always feel that, for the parents’ sake, if there’s enough outrage, they feel like maybe people will learn something in memory of their child. We certainly saw that with McKenzie Scott. But there’s been an awful lot of other kids that … don’t get any more attention than the average pedestrian fatality.”

School district police announced Thursday that two other students suffered non-life-threatening injuries when they were struck by a pickup truck outside a marked crosswalk while traveling on Alexander Road near 5th Street in North Las Vegas. A different crash occurred the same day in the area of Commerce and Revere streets in North Las Vegas, but that juvenile did not sustain injuries, the Clark County School District Police Department said in a news release.

The deaths of Suarez and Ryan, combined with other recent juvenile collisions, should be a “watershed moment” for everyone in the area, Clark County Commissioner Michael Naft said in a recent phone interview.

“I wish and I plead that everyone in the community treats each of these tragedies as an opportunity to look within yourself, look within the actions that you take on a daily basis and double down on your own personal efforts to be aware of your surroundings,” Naft said. “Each of us must do something to curb what is an all-too-routine loss of life.”

A Traffic Safety Working Group, established by the school district in August, is analyzing traffic safety data in school zones and is aiming to produce a phased school traffic safety plan by the spring, Breen and Naft said.

According to state figures, the number of fatal pedestrian crashes overall has decreased in Clark County in 2025. At least 59 pedestrians died in Clark County from Jan. 1 to Sept. 30, a 16.9 percent decrease from the 71 pedestrian fatalities reported during the same span in 2024, according to a monthly fatal report published Oct. 7 by the Nevada Department of Public Safety.

The report noted that 2024 was the deadliest year for all road users since at least 2015.

So, if pedestrian fatalities overall are down this year, what is causing a spike in the number of children being struck by vehicles? Experts cited a few factors.

Child pedestrians can at times be unpredictable and may enter the roadway without checking for vehicles, Breen said. She added that many motorists and pedestrians are also distracted by cell phones and other devices while traveling, which may increase the risk of a crash.

“In school zones, there are decreased speeds,” said Deborah Kuhls, chief trauma surgeon at University Medical Center. “But there is low compliance with speed limits overall, and especially in school zones, which puts our children at risk.”

Children are also far more vulnerable to serious or fatal injuries than adults, Kuhls said. She said vehicles that would strike an adult at waist level hit a child in their upper body or head because of their smaller stature.

Electric vehicles often to blame

The rising popularity of e-bikes and e-scooters is also contributing to the increase in child pedestrian collisions. About half of all collision investigations this school year indicated there was pedestrian error, and about 35 percent involved so-called e-devices, the school district said.

Breen noted that many recent roadway deaths have involved juveniles on electric bikes or scooters and said she reminded parents that children “can be killed on any type of device if they’re not being careful.” She encouraged parents to let their children ride bikes and scooters, but only if they’re doing so safely.

“It’s important, no matter how you travel on wheels, that you have a helmet on your head,” Breen said. “I don’t want to scare parents into taking these devices away and saying, ‘No, you can’t use them.’ I just want to make sure that they’re taking the time to not only educate their kids, but check back in.”

In general, both Breen and another traffic safety expert cited a rise in speeding drivers, growing car sizes, and poor pedestrian infrastructure as some of the factors that contribute to road collisions and fatalities.

Wide lanes and multi-lane roads tend to invite speeding, which is often the leading factor in fatal collisions, said Dan Burden, a traffic and walkability expert at the Minnesota-based wellness company Blue Zones.

“The statistics are very clear that if we design for speed and capacity, we’re going to lose a lot of human lives,” Burden said.

After Suarez died, Las Vegas and North Las Vegas officials committed to making changes to Owens Avenue and 21st Street, the intersection where the boy was hit, such as cleaning the crosswalk to make it more visible and to make flashing pedestrian lights activate longer. Las Vegas officials said they plan to install a traffic light at the intersection in 2026.

One proven solution Breen and Naft pointed to was increasing the number of crossing guards at intersections near schools. They said when more middle schools received crossing guards last year, fewer middle school students were struck by cars.

Naft also noted a 2022 ordinance that was enacted that requires all future roads 60 feet wide or longer to have at least a five-foot buffer between the road and sidewalk, which he said improves pedestrian safety and will increase property values.

Also, a new law enacted in July allows school districts in Nevada to attach cameras onto school bus stop arms for traffic enforcement. The school district is planning to find a third-party vendor to install the cameras onto the bus fleet in the coming months, a school district spokesperson said via email.

Zink, the school district police lieutenant, said he believes these cameras will greatly improve traffic enforcement around schoolchildren.

“It’s sad that it’s come down to that, to where to get our kids to school safely we have to invest in technology to write a lot of tickets, but hopefully people will learn,” Zink said at a pedestrian safety event on Oct. 8. “It would be great if we could have one school year where nobody got hit going to or from school.”

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Contact Spencer Levering at slevering@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0253. Contact Casey Harrison at charrison@reviewjournal.com. Follow @casey-harrison.bsky.social on Bluesky.