Click image for Haverhill City Council agenda.
Haverhill city councilors tonight will take up pedestrian safety along Main Street after a 9-year-old was seriously injured last Thursday while leaving his school bus and struck by an allegedly drunken driver.
City Council President Thomas J. Sullivan and Councilor John A. Michitson placed the matter on Tuesday’s agenda—the first full meeting of the city’s 11-member, mostly ward-based legislative body.
This is not the first time councilors have investigated pedestrian safety in the area. Improved lighting and better signals followed a Council review during the fall of 2018 when an 18-year-old and 24-year-old were struck by cars within 10 minutes of each other on Main Street. One of the pedestrians suffered injuries serious enough necessitate an emergency airlift to a Boston hospital. In May 2018, 68-year-old Haverhill resident Dennis George Tuttle was killed while crossing Main Street near 18th Avenue.
Councilors similarly reacted early in 2019 when pedestrian Charles O. “Chucky” Burrill Jr. was struck and killed by a hit and run driver while walking within a crosswalk at White’s Corner, downtown.
As WHAV reported first, 44-year-old Tiffany Zembower of Haverhill was charged last Thursday with driving a 2003 Toyota Tacoma under the influence of alcohol, second offense; driving under the influence of alcohol and causing serious injury; driving with an open container of alcohol; driving with a suspended license; and failing to stop for a school bus.
Haverhill Police and school officials said the student was struck just before 5:30 p.m., after the child stepped off the bus along Main Street near 13th Avenue. He was airlifted to a Boston hospital for treatment of serious injuries.
In other business before the City Council, councilors are expected to receive and place on file Mayor Melinda E. Barrett’s appointments of Eleftheria Miscowski as the mayor’s executive assistant. Miscowski previously worked as an assistant in the city’s Community Development Division in City Hall.
The Haverhill City Council meets tonight at 7, remotely and in-person at the Theodore A. Pelosi Jr. Council Chambers, room 202, Haverhill City Hall, 4 Summer St., As a public service, 97.9 WHAV plans to carry the meeting live.