A Queens teen with autism was fatally struck by a automotive after going lacking from his Lengthy Island college this week, and now his household is demanding solutions.
The sufferer, recognized as 15-year-old Christopher Williams of St. Albans, was strolling alongside the Southern State Parkway in Valley Stream when he was hit by an eastbound car close to Exit 13 shortly after 1 p.m. on Thursday, in accordance with New York State Police.
Williams was taken to Franklin Normal Hospital in Valley Stream, the place he was later pronounced useless.
Shortly earlier than the tragic incident, the teenager was reported lacking from the Martin De Porres Faculty, a particular schooling college in Elmont, lower than a mile from the crash website.
On a GoFundMe set as much as assist the household cowl funeral prices, Williams’ sister, Danecia Lewis, blamed the varsity for failing her brother.
“On what should have been a normal school day, our world was shattered forever … and now our family is left grieving an unimaginable loss,” she wrote.
In response to Danecia, college officers referred to as the boy’s mom earlier on Thursday to ask about his whereabouts, “unaware that he was already gone.” A short while later, his mother acquired a name from a detective “to identify his body.”
It’s unclear how or when Williams walked off college grounds. The varsity didn’t instantly reply to a request for touch upon Friday.
The incident got here simply in the future after one other Nassau County scholar managed to go away his college unattended and stroll house alone.
The 5-year-old Riverside Elementary Faculty kindergarten scholar “climbed the fence at the property line and walked home,” Superintendent Matthew Gaven stated in a letter to the neighborhood.
Whereas the boy was unhurt, the incident prompted the Rockville Centre Faculty District to announce it might retrain its employees on supervision practices, strengthen headcount procedures and evaluate campus safety, together with fencing and gates.
Initially Printed: September 5, 2025 at 5:50 PM EDT
