14-year-old seriously injured when clipped by construction vehicle

BUTLER, Pa. — A 14-year-old is recovering after he was hit by a construction vehicle while he was walking to school.

Andrew Bowser, an eighth-grader at Butler Intermediate, was struck Wednesday morning on Pillow Street in Butler.

“I don’t remember anything about it. All I know is I woke up at the hospital,” Andrew said. “Probably better than remembering the graphic details of being hit by a car.”

The boy was about a block and a half from home trying to cross an intersection when he was hit by a construction vehicle’s mirror. He suffered a broken collarbone, and cuts that required stitches on his chin and staples in his head.

His father passed the crash on his way to work and had no idea his son was involved.

“I rerouted around the accident, and then I got maybe 10 minutes away and I had this sinking feeling and I was praying in my car, ‘Please don’t let me get a call that that was my Andrew,’” Doren Bowser said.

In the meantime, with his parents unaware of what had happened, the boy’s principal came to the scene, rode in the ambulance and reassured Andrew he had his back.

“I'm not an emotional guy, but I would probably give him a hug and thank him from the bottom of my heart because that was just something. That was really heart touching that somebody went and stayed with Andrew in a very scary situation,” Doren Bowser said.

Cox Media Group