Middle school student on the mend after being hit by car
By Nancy Needham nancy@theacorn.com

GLAD TO BE HERE--Daniel Johnstun, 12, survived being hit by a car exiting the Vons parking lot when he was riding his bike home from Los Cerritos Middle School last week. He rode on the hood for a few feet before being dropped to the median of Erbes Road. A tire, he said, may have run over his foot after he slid off.

When a car driven by an 82-year-old woman struck 12-year-old Daniel Johnstun, he thought he was having a nightmare.

"You know how sometimes you have a dream and you think you're going to die, but then you wake up? It was like that. It didn't feel real, so I thought maybe it was a dream," the boy recalled.

It began with the seventh-grader riding his bike home from Los Cerritos Middle School. It's a three-mile commute he makes every school day, his mother, Sandra, said.

Daniel was wearing a helmet and riding his bike on the sidewalk on Erbes Road heading toward Avenida de Los Arboles when he came to the second driveway out of Oakbrook Shopping Center, the one near the front of Vons supermarket. After school lets out at 3:10 p.m., that area is full of children, some walking, others on bikes and skateboards on their way home.

"I saw the car coming, so I stopped my bike. The car stopped--I thought for me--and so I got up on my pedals and began crossing the driveway," Daniel said.

Then the silver Honda Civic drove right into him, he said.

"I didn't see her eyes. She was short and wearing sunglasses."

Daniel went on top of the hood and his bike went under the car, got stuck and began to make a racket. The car slowed and stopped at the median; Daniel slid off the car and believes that his foot was run over by the car's tire at that time, he said.

"I think if I had been sitting on my bike's seat instead of up on the pedals I would've gone under the car with my bike," Daniel said.

Fortunately, he didn't go under the car. He was able to limp away from the accident with only a bruised foot. Someone at the scene gave him a phone so he could call his mom.

"He sounded fine when he called, so when he said, 'Mom, I was hit by a car,' I wasn't too worried," Sandra Johnstun said.

Daniel is one of eight children and not the first one to be struck by a car, she said. His younger brother Michael, 6, survived being run over by a car in a parking lot, Sandra said.

Daniel was taken by ambulance to Los Robles Medical Center, where his foot was X-rayed, and he was sent home on crutches. There appeared not to be a fracture, his mother said, but after the swelling goes down another X-ray will be taken to be sure.

"I'm lucky to be alive," Daniel said.

"One of the most common causes of bicycle accidents is riding in the wrong direction: Bikes should ride with the traffic, not against the traffic," said Sgt. Tom Bennett of the Thousand Oaks Police traffic department.

The driver was looking to her left watching for traffic when Daniel went in front of her from the right. Even though he was on the sidewalk and not in the bike lane, he shouldn't have been going against traffic, Bennett said.