SUV hits, kills 9-year-old on bicycle

Officers say speed doesn't appear to have been a factor in the crash that killed the boy out on an afternoon ride.

By SAUNDRA AMRHEIN
Published July 16, 2004

SEFFNER - The adults wanted to blame speed. They wanted to blame overgrown trees and blind intersections.

But all they could really do was look helplessly at the spot on Peach Avenue where 9-year-old Tyler Wade Head pulled out on his Powerlite bike Thursday in front of a Ford Explorer and was killed.

"I just lost my baby," wailed his mother 32-year-old Tammy Hill, crying in the arms of a friend who had come to comfort the family hours after the crash, which happened about 3 p.m. in this working-class neighborhood of small streets and playing children.

"There are lots of kids around here; they need to do something about the speeding," said Hill's fiance, 25-year-old Jerry Toloff.

But the driver who hit Tyler, 35-year-old Suzette Barger, of Mosaic Forest Drive in Seffner, likely was not speeding, said Hillsborough County Sheriff Deputy Fred Ward.

The initial study of evidence showed that Barger, the driver of the Ford Explorer that struck Tyler, appeared to be driving about 20 mph, Ward told Toloff at the scene.

The speed limit in the area is 25 mph.

Tyler lived with his dad in Arkansas but visited his mother and Toloff each summer, family and friends said. He loved PlayStation, NASCAR and riding through the neighborhood on the bike a friend gave him.

According to deputies and family, Tyler left his home on Lemon Avenue to visit a friend when he cut through a dirt alley that connected Lemon Avenue to Peach Avenue, a one-lane road where cars must pull off to the side to let other vehicles pass.

Tracks in the dirt showed Tyler braked on the road just before Peach Avenue, but then continued across the asphalt on Peach, possibly not seeing Barger's southbound Explorer around the bushes and trees at the corner.

The Explorer struck Tyler, dragging the bike and stopping about 25 yards from impact, the sheriff's office said. Tyler died at the scene.

No charges or citations have been issued pending the results of the investigation.

Later, in the early evening, as friends with bloodshot eyes gathered to comfort her, Hill walked out of her home to visit the scene. Wrapped in Toloff's arms, she walked in her socks down the road to see where her son was killed.

Weeping and unable to walk on her own, she returned to her home, where she curled up on the couch with Tyler's framed baby picture clutched in her arms. Friends covered her with blankets and coaxed her to sleep as the family's two dogs - a chihuahua mix and Rottweiler - gathered around the couch to nuzzle next to her.

Tyler's baby pictures adorned the walls in the small home; the living room entertainment center featured one of his photos surrounded by Dale Earnhardt's No. 3 race car.

"We were going to take him to see Spider-Man 2 tonight," Toloff said, as even more friends gathered, whispering in the house about the freckle-faced boy they remembered as full of life and curiosity.

Back at the scene of the accident, neighbors gathered to talk and shake their heads, as a little girl circled them on a small pink bike.

[Last modified July 16, 2004, 01:20:28]