Driver strikes crossing guard, flees scene in West Pullman

CHICAGO (WLS) -- Police are searching for a hit-and-run driver who struck a school crossing guard on the city's Far South Side in the West Pullman neighborhood.

Kristy Young, 27, was escorting Brown Academy students across the street at West 127th Street and South Union Avenue around 4 p.m. Monday when she was struck by the speeding SUV, police said.

"She had the sign up and the car actually came around the rest of the cars that had stopped and hit her," Brown Academy Principal Steven Askew said.

The driver didn't stop.

"I just heard this horrible sound. When I turned around, the kids were screaming and I saw her actually being dragged and lying on the ground," Gwendolyn Black said. Black, who is also a crossing guard, called 9-1-1.

"It was horrifying. It was heartbreaking. Because she was on one side and she got hit so hard she ended up on the opposite side of the street," Teri Moore said.

"She said she was knocked out of her shoes. She was thrown over the vehicle. She did get a slight glimpse. The drive was a male," sister Tiffaney Young said.

Young, a mother of two who was working two jobs while finishing her college degree, is in fair condition at Christ Hospital with multiples factures and a lacerated liver. She faces a long road or rehabilitation, her family said.

Police issued an alert for the vehicle, a dark SUV. Anyone with information on the crash is asked to call the Major Accident Investigation Unit at (312) 745-4521.