Mundy Mill High School junior Maurice Freeman told his mother he felt like roadkill.
The 17-year-old, who plans to join the Air Force, then an oncologist, was walking to school Tuesday morning when he was hit from behind by an unidentified driver on Hwy. 54 in Jonesboro, not far from the Clayton County courthouse.
A Clayton police spokeswoman said investigators are looking for a burgundy van or SUV believed to have been responsible for the accident.
Equally disturbing is the number of vehicles that drove around Freeman as he lay in the road, said family friend Sasha McCrear.
Fortunately, a local educator, Callaway Elementary School Principal Marcus Fuller, parked his car next to Freeman, shielding him from oncoming traffic until paramedics arrived.
"It's sad how cold people have become," said Freeman's mother, Erica Browning, from her son's room at Atlanta Medical Center. Freeman sustained a broken pelvis and tailbone, and entered the hospital with blood around his brain, Browning said.
On Friday, however, he started showing some improvement. The swelling is down, his mother said, and he's communicating with her and his physicians -- an unexpected development, considering the severity of his injuries.
"They say he should recover," Browning said. Doctors can't yet say whether Freeman will be able to function as he did before the accident.
"They're still saying we have to take it day by day," his mother said.
Browning said she hopes the driver of the car who hit her son will succumb to guilt and turn him or herself in.
"I hope this is eating at their soul," she said.
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