ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, June 11, 1996 TAG: 9606110056
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETTY HAYDEN SNIDER STAFF WRITER
``Just five or 10 more minutes," said Tempral Akers, shaking her head and fighting tears. A few more minutes, and a little boy might not have died.
Akers sat on a sidewalk in front of a row of Northeast Roanoke town houses where 4-year-old Robert Thomas Blevins was hit by a car Monday in front of his home. Akers said she heard Robert's mother say she would be calling him and his sisters in at 6:30.
Shortly before 6:20 p.m., a car traveling south on 20th Street Northeast near Yeager Avenue struck the boy as he crossed the street, police said. Robert died at Carilion Roanoke Memorial about an hour later.
The driver, a 19-year-old woman who lives in the neighborhood, has not been charged. Police did not release her name as they continued to investigate the accident.
Akers lives next door to the small cluster of town houses where the boy lived. She said Robert and a group of kids, including his two sisters and Akers' son, were pretending to fish with her husband's rod and reel.
Akers did not know what might have led the boy into the street as the car approached.
"They were playing in the parking lot. I don't know what he did," Akers said. "I don't know what they were doing. There's no ball out there."
Police said Robert may have been crossing the street because he saw another child petting a dog.
Akers said that when she called her 6-year-old, Cody, in for the night, she retrieved the fishing pole. She said Cody had been inside about two minutes when the accident occurred.
Akers didn't see what happened, but she heard it, along with Robert's sister's screams.
The girl's screams brought others out of their homes as well - one of whom tried to save the boy's life.
When Vern Mullens reached Robert, the boy wasn't breathing. The 24-year-old plumber, who learned mouth-to-mouth resuscitation in the Army, worked on the boy until rescue crews arrived.
"I finally got a pulse right before the medics got here," Mullens said quietly. He didn't know Robert, but had met the boy's parents a couple of weeks ago.
Akers' children, Cody and 9-year-old Brandy, often played with the Blevins children, who moved to the neighborhood less than a year ago.
As police carried out the technical work that tragedies entail for them - examining the car and diagramming the accident - neighborhood adults gathered in small groups, talking in hushed tones about the sudden impact on their community. Children, meanwhile, appeared not to grasp the loss: A few of them jumped and flipped on a trampoline and sprayed each other with a garden hose - just the kind of things they do on any ordinary spring evening.
LENGTH: Medium: 60 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: STEPHANIE KLEIN-DAVIS/Staff. ``I finally got a pulseby CNBright before the medics got here," Vern Mullens said. He gave Robert
Blevins mouth-to-mouth
resuscitation at the accident scene. color. KEYWORDS: FATALITY